Podcasts about Chinese

When a Chinese diplomat's daughter is kidnapped in Los Angeles, he calls in Hong Kong Detective Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) to assist the FBI with the case. But the FBI doesn't want anything to do with Lee, and they dump him off on the LAPD, who assign wisecracking Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) to watch over him. Although Lee and Carter can't stand each other, they choose to work together to solve the case on their own when they figure out they've been ditched by both the FBI and police.

A.M. Edition for April 22. The U.S. and India agree to broad terms to negotiate a potential trade deal. WSJ's South Asia bureau chief Tripti Lahiri says India, a country that has long frustrated foreign companies with red tape, now sees an opening to capture American investment from China. Meanwhile, Washington targets Chinese solar-product manufacturers in Southeast Asia with steep tariffs. And Harvard sues the Trump administration in an escalating battle over its funding. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features a dynamic duo: Dr. Drew Pierson, a pioneer in neurofeedback and electrical brain mapping, and Dr. Amy Albright, an intuitive healer with a background in integrative and Chinese medicine. Together, they co-lead Holon—a powerful brain training intensive that mimics the insights of psychedelics without requiring substances.I share my personal experience with the program, and then we dive into the science of QEEG brain mapping, trauma resolution, intuition activation, and cognitive transformation. We also explore the power of gamma brainwaves and altered states, how psychedelic-like experiences can be reached without substances, and the gentle unwinding of trauma stored in the body.DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for educational purposes only and not intended for diagnosing or treating illnesses. The hosts disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects from using the information presented. Consult your healthcare provider before using referenced products. This podcast may include paid endorsements.THIS SHOW IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY:LIMITLESS LIVING MD | Book your free consultation today at limitlesslivingmd.com/luke and use code LUKE for 12% off your first order.PIQUE | Get up to 20% off plus a free starter kit at piquelife.com/luke.QUANTUM UPGRADE | Get a 15-day free trial with code LUKE15 at lukestorey.com/quantumupgrade.LITTLE SAINTS | Visit lukestorey.com/littlesaints and use code LUKE to get 20% off your first order.MORE ABOUT THIS EPISODE:(00:00:00) Origins of the NeuroPraxis Method(00:12:21) Redefining the Healing Process(00:26:55) How Neurofeedback and Human Coaching Work Together(00:38:08) The Neuroscience of “No Drama”(00:52:13) AI Meets Brain Optimization(01:04:40) Reclaiming Personal Power in a Tech-Dominated World(01:18:10) Global Consciousness & the Bigger Picture(01:33:22) Building a New Earth TogetherResources:• Website: holonexperience.com• Instagram: @holon_experienceThe Life Stylist is produced by Crate Media.

Donate (no account necessary) | Subscribe (account required) Join Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA Operations Officer, as he breaks down today's biggest stories shaping America and the world. Border Battles Intensify: Mexico Rejects Trump Ad Campaign, Dumps Sewage on U.S. Beaches – President Sheinbaum bans U.S. immigration ads from Mexican airwaves, calling them “discriminatory.” Meanwhile, raw sewage continues flowing from Tijuana into San Diego, sickening U.S. troops. Trump officials say Mexico must fix the crisis - or face financial consequences. Trump Slams Federal Courts for Halting Deportations – The president criticizes the judiciary for blocking mass deportations, calling due process for millions of illegal immigrants “a ridiculous situation.” Meanwhile, over 500,000 migrants from the Biden era skipped court dates entirely. Leaked DOJ Data Could Fuel Deportation Surge – DOGE gains access to a sensitive DOJ migrant database, potentially expanding self-deportation pressure via fraud crackdowns and benefit denials. Democrats Warn Global Leaders Against Supporting Trump – Rep. Jamie Raskin says Democrats will “remember” any country that helps Trump, threatening diplomatic retribution once Democrats regain power. Chinese Mafia Violence Rocks Rome as Pope Francis Passes – A high-profile mafia witness is assassinated ahead of a major trial exposing Beijing-linked criminal networks across Europe. ProPublica reports the Chinese mafia acts as unofficial agents for the Communist Party. Beijing Enters Congo Conflict Over Critical Minerals – China pressures Rwanda to halt its backing of rebels in eastern Congo, fearing U.S. companies will displace Chinese firms in the race for rare earth dominance. Denmark's Socialist Leader Adopts Trump-Style Immigration Policies – PM Mette Frederiksen embraces tough border controls, migrant deportation, and even ghetto-reduction laws - agreeing with VP JD Vance that Europe must take back control. "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32​

To become a follower of Jesus, visit: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/MeetJesus (NOT a Morning Mindset resource) ⇒ TODAY'S DAILY SPONSOR: Morning Mindset listener, Debi - in memory of her mom. You can sponsor a daily episode of the Morning Mindset too, by going to https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/DailySponsor ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: Mark 2:23–28 - [23] One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. [24] And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” [25] And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: [26] how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” [27] And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. [28] So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (ESV) ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ FINANCIALLY SUPPORT THE MORNING MINDSET: (not tax-deductible) -- Become a monthly partner: https://mm-gfk-partners.supercast.com/ -- Support a daily episode: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/daily-sponsor/ -- Give one-time: https://give.cornerstone.cc/careygreen -- Venmo: @CareyNGreen -- Support our SPANISH TRANSLATION: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/supportSpanish -- Support our HINDI TRANSLATION: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/supportHindi -- Support our CHINESE TRANSLATION: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/supportChinese  ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ FOREIGN LANGUAGE VERSIONS OF THIS PODCAST: SPANISH version: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/Spanish HINDI version: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/Hindi CHINESE version: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/Chinese  ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ CONTACT: Carey@careygreen.com  ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ THEME MUSIC: “King’s Trailer” – Creative Commons 0 | Provided by https://freepd.com/ ***All NON-ENGLISH versions of the Morning Mindset are translated using A.I. Dubbing and Translation tools from DubFormer.ai ***All NON-ENGLISH text content (descriptions and titles) are translated using the A.I. functionality of Google Translate.

Jeff Bridges names my son, the deck police chase some burglars, the wedding blackface painter is caught, Kanye blows the Fourth Reich, "You don't complain about Islam enough", a tribal contest to pick up a fat American woman, a gangster photoshops his knuckles, the Chinese attack luxury goods, the perfect amount of women, how to meet friends in the city after 30, and the WATP/TDS Live Show is coming on June 21st; all that and more this week on The Dick Show!

The U.S. is rattled by tariffs, economic uncertainty, and political U-turns on crypto. But across Asia, the response has been … different. In this episode of Unchained, we check in with two of the sharpest observers of Asia's crypto landscape: Emily Parker, China and Japan advisor of the Global Blockchain Business Council, and Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands. They unpack how Asia views the Trump crypto pivot, what's actually happening inside China, why Hong Kong may be the most important jurisdiction in crypto right now, and how Japan and Korea are quietly shaping the future of regulation, stablecoins, and DeFi. Plus: Is crypto really banned in China? Why Korea is lifting its “shadow ban” Why crypto gaming is thriving in Asia And what the West can learn from it all Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Bitwise Guests: Emily Parker, China and Japan Advisor at the Global Blockchain Business Council Yat Siu, Chairman of Animoca Brands Links WSJ: Crypto Is Illegal in China. Binance Does $90 Billion of Business There Anyway. Timestamps: 

From the BBC World Service: Sky-high tariffs on Chinese goods arriving at the U.S. border are already having a knock-on effect for many companies. Many manufacturers in China are in a state of limbo, having to warehouse stock and hoping for a more favorable trade deal eventually. Meanwhile, the international diamond trade is keeping a close eye on India, where U.S. Vice President JD Vance has been talking trade with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

++PSA++ Join us this Memorial Day Weekend, Saturday May 24th at Punch Line Philly for the TRPE 8th Anniversary Live Special!! Special guests, cash prizes and other giveaways as we celebrate 8 years of TRPE. Get your tickets today at https://punchlinephilly.com/shows  Simply stated today's show is an INSTANT CLASSIC!! 2 plus hours of content covering some of the net's most viral topics featuring some amazing analysis and deep dives. Today's topics include an overview of the biggest film of the year, Ryan Coogler's SINNERS, his first foray into the horror genre. This takes us to a comparison of Michael B. Jordan vs Jonathan Majors and the latter's riveting performance in Magazine Dreams.  Later we get into Nas' recent legacy signings at Mass Appeal Records and which ones we're actually looking forward to. This takes us to the annual Mt. Rushmore discussion and two of the most viral which were the White Rapper & Philly Rushmore lists that had the net in a frenzy. Along the way there's some praise for Cassidy and a look at what caused his arrested development. Other stops are made on this content journey with Lil Wayne, the Chinese bootleg play and Wallo's black business rant going apeshit. All this and more on the latest episode of The Realest Podcast Ever.  For more exclusive content subscribe to us now on patreon FOR FREE at https://patreon.com/officialtrpe 

Ch’en Shu (1660–1736) was a Chinese painter from the Qing dynasty, known for her exquisite flower-and-bird paintings that blended precision with delicate beauty. As one of the few recognized female artists of her time, she mastered traditional painting techniques while incorporating her own refined sense of composition and color. For Further Reading: ‘The Mountains are Quiet and the Days Grow Long’: The Steady Hand of Ch’en Shu The Conventional Success of Ch'en Shu Chen Shu | Cockatoo | China | Qing dynasty (1644–1911) This month, we’re talking about cultivators — women who nurtured, cross-pollinated, experimented, or went to great lengths to better understand and protect the natural world. History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should. Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Adrien Behn, Alyia Yates, Vanessa Handy, Melia Agudelo, and Joia Putnoi. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Brittany Martinez. Follow Wonder Media Network: Website Instagram Twitter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you are in any way interested in precious metals,  you need to see what today's video sponsor, Monetary Metals, is doing with them at the link below: http://www.monetary-metals.com/Snider/We're moving out of the theoretical impacts from tariffs and global weakness and into the reality of the situation. The first data from April is coming in from a variety of sources. China is seeing major reactions, as did South Korea. Hardly being spared, the response in Philly manufacturing was near-historic. Here comes the data for all those dependent. Eurodollar University's Money & Macro AnalysisCNBC Trade war fallout: Cancellations of Chinese freight ships begin as bookings plummethttps://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/16/trade-war-fallout-china-freight-ship-decline-begins-orders-plummet.htmlBloomberg Shrinking Korea Exports Send Global Warning on Trump Tariffshttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-21/south-korea-s-early-trade-data-show-exports-shrank-after-tariffsHankyoreh BOK warns of negative economic growth in Q1, hinting at another downgrade in Mayhttps://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/1193165.htmlConference Board March 2025 LEIhttps://www.conference-board.org/topics/us-leading-indicatorshttps://www.eurodollar.universityTwitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_EDU

Joe's Premium Subscription: www.standardgrain.comGrain Markets and Other Stuff Links-Apple PodcastsSpotifyTikTokYouTubeFutures and options trading involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone.0:00 Subscribe!0:45 Dollar, Trump, Powell, Commodities4:06 US / India Talks8:15 US Planting Update11:27 SA Countries Benefit from Trade War13:19 Corn Shipments are Strong

This week, Matchmaker Maria is joined by the insightful and hilarious Jessie to break down what's happening in the wild world of dating right now. From the rise of kittenfishing—yes, that sneaky cousin of catfishing where people add just a little too much sparkle to their online personas to the U.S. government literally banning romantic relationships with Chinese nationals (wait...doesn't banning it make it even hotter?!), no topic is off-limits. Tune in for the hot takes, dating tips, and a little spy drama with your swipe sesh.

In this episode of Techish, Michael Berhane and Abadesi discuss various themes including innovative approaches to coding interviews, the role of AI in education, potential dystopian futures in schooling, and the impact of Chinese manufacturing on Western brands. They explore the implications of these topics on society and the future of work, emphasizing the need for critical thinking and adaptability in a rapidly changing technological landscape.Reading Material:https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/columbia-university-student-trolls-big-tech-ai-tool-job-applications-rcna198454https://www.theverge.com/tech/649049/tiktok-chinese-factories-tariffs-birkenstock-hermesChapters00:00 Upcoming06:18 The Future of AI in Education09:10 The Impact of AI on Critical Thinking12:00 The Dystopian Future of Education15:13 The Quality of Chinese Goods in the Market19:01 The Rise of Discount CultureJoin our Patreon for extra-long episodes and ad-free content: https://www.patreon.com/techish Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techishpod/Advertise on Techish: https://goo.gl/forms/MY0F79gkRG6Jp8dJ2————————————————————Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast episode represents the personal opinions and experiences of the presenters and is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered professional advice. Neither host nor guests can be held responsible for any direct or incidental loss incurred by applying any of the information. Always do your own research or seek independent advice before making any decisions. Stay in touch with the hashtag #Techishhttps://www.instagram.com/techishpod/https://www.instagram.com/abadesi/https://www.instagram.com/michaelberhane_/ https://www.instagram.com/hustlecrewlive/https://www.instagram.com/pocintech/Email us at techishpod@gmail.com ...

A deeper look at Trump's tough stance on Canada reveals more than just trade tensions—it's about national security. From cartel assassins crossing the northern border to Canadian banks linked to Chinese fentanyl trafficking, Trump's tariffs and border actions were aimed at dismantling a dangerous pipeline. As cartel plots to assassinate him surface and terror suspects exploit lax Canadian vetting, a silent war unfolds—one the mainstream media rarely covers.

As Senator JD Vance visits India to expand trade ties, overlooked headlines reveal a global shift away from China—welcoming Trump's tariff strategy. India supports the tariffs, imposes its own on Chinese steel, and eyes deeper U.S. trade partnerships. Meanwhile, China threatens vague retaliation, and deeper truths emerge about America's entanglement with the Chinese Communist Party. From COVID's engineered origins to elite financial complicity, this fiery analysis exposes how U.S. media, political figures, and globalist interests are aiding China's rise—while silencing those who dare to challenge the status quo.

Two young women walk into a theatre in China in 1935 and so begins a relationship that spans a turbulent period of history and ends with the death of one of them. Hannah chats to playwright and historian Amy Ng about her latest play, Shanghai Dolls, about finding the women behind the legends of Sun Weishi and Madame Mao, and about how we could all probably do with brushing up on our Chinese history. More information and tickets here: https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/shanghai-dolls/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit cocomocoe.substack.comThank you for your patience on this episode going up Tuesday vs Monday and happy Easter, coconuts ❤️

Episode Title:“Papal Smoke Signals, Space Packages, and Megalophobia Madness”Episode Description:In Episode 384 of The Cigar Hustlers Podcast, we unpack a wild week of global events and cigar industry buzz. The world mourns as Pope Francis passes away, and we break down what happens next inside the walls of the Vatican—including how the next Pope is chosen. Then, we dive into the shipping shake-up: DHL teams up with the Chinese postal service while suspending certain packages to the U.S., SpaceX starts looking a lot like Amazon in orbit, and U.S. ports are pushing back with proposed new docking fees for Chinese ships.On the cigar front, C.L.E. launches Megalophobia in a bold move that has everyone talking, and Plasencia takes things to new heights with Alma del Cielo, a cigar crafted in high-altitude magic.Tune in for sharp takes, solid laughs, and the insider scoop—only on The Cigar Hustlers Podcast.

Summary: In this conversation, Justin and Adam explore the art of stir frying, a quick and flavorful cooking technique with deep roots in Chinese culinary history. They discuss the essential tools, particularly the wok, and share personal experiences with stir fry, highlighting its versatility and appeal. The two delve into the history of stir fry, its evolution over time, and practical tips for mastering the technique at home, making it accessible for both novice and experienced cooks. In this conversation, they explore the intricacies of stir-frying, covering essential techniques, ingredient choices, and creative recipes. They emphasize the importance of using high heat, the right oils, and the velveting technique to ensure tender meat. The discussion also explores the use of wild foods and various starch options like rice and noodles, culminating in practical recipes that highlight the versatility of stir-frying. - Leave a Review of the Podcast - Buy our Wild Fish and Game Spices Links: The Woks of Life Serious Eats Chinese Venison and Snowpea Stir Fry Better-than-Takeout Broccolini Venison  Venison Heart Stir Fry Wild Turkey Stir Fry Wild Pork and Green Bean Stir Fry Bullhead and Ramp Fried Rice Spicy Squirrel Stir Fry Takeaways: Stir fry is a quick cooking technique that originated in China. The wok is essential for achieving the best stir fry results. Stir frying is ideal for weeknight meals and culinary improvisation. The history of stir fry dates back to ancient China during the Han Dynasty. Stir fry gained popularity in the West during the 70s and 80s due to health trends. Use oils with high smoke points like avocado or grapeseed. Keep the wok moving to achieve the best results. Cold rice is ideal for making fried rice. Velveting meat with baking soda enhances tenderness. Wild game meats work well in stir-fries. Store rice separately from stir-fry leftovers to maintain texture. Stir-fry recipes can be easily adapted with available ingredients. Leftovers can be transformed into quick and delicious stir-fry meals. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Stir Fry: A Culinary Adventure 05:22 The History of Stir Fry: From Ancient China to Modern Cuisine 16:19 Personal Experiences with Stir Fry: A Culinary Journey 22:19 Mastering the Wok: Essential Tools and Techniques 24:54 Steps to Perfect Stir Fry: Techniques and Tips 28:19 Mastering the Art of Stir-Frying 32:03 Choosing the Right Rice and Noodles 36:14 The Velveting Technique for Tender Meat 39:05 Exploring Wild Foods for Stir-Fry 46:21 Creative Stir-Fry Recipes and Leftovers Keywords: Stir fry, cooking techniques, Chinese cuisine, wok, culinary history, wild foods, cooking tips, stir fry recipes, food preparation, culinary improvisation, stir-fry, cooking techniques, wild foods, velveting, rice, noodles, recipes, high heat cooking, venison, stir-fry tips Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textMy guest on the podcast this week is the fabulous Yidan Xiong.Born and raised in China, but now living in northern Thailand, Yidan went from being a marketing executive in Beijing, to being a farmer living in rural Thailand with an array of animals, from cats and dogs to pigs and chickens. Yidan has created her very own farm stay, Yidan's Farm, for travellers and people living a nomadic lifestyle to come and immerse themselves in nature, interact with the animals, and help grow and harvest the food on the farm, as well as cook and eat together.Yidan is single and childfree.Topics that we cover are:her life in Beijing before she started a new life in, Chiang Dao, Thailand;the hard working ethic of the Chinese people;how she ended up creating Yidan's Farm, and what that journey looked like;the picture she had in her mind when she started building her farm;the houses she built using bamboo because her Grandpa worked with bamboo in her childhood;how Yidan found local workers to help her with her project;the kinds of guests who tend to stay with Yidan on the farm;the many animals that Yidan has on the farm, and how many of them ‘found her';how important nature is to her, having rediscovered the connection she always had to it as a young girl;the slower pace of life that she now enjoys;what freedom means to Yidan, and the part that money plays in feeling free;how her parents have reacted to her life in Thailand;her mother's disappointment that Yidan hasn't married or had kids, and how she found it hard to believe that Yidan was ‘really' happy;how she deals with the opinions of others when it comes to her way of life;the wonderful relationships she has with the people — largely women — who stay on her farm;what thriving solo means to Yidan.Follow Yidan's Farm on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yidansfarmlifeinthailand7931Find her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lazybearka/?locale=en_GBFollow Yidan on Instagram: @https://www.instagram.com/yidan333/?hl=enFollow Yidan's Farm on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yidansfarm/Book a stay on the farm: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/707506011857011499?source_impression_id=p3_1742665507_P3f-mhnCLVPD4QuS7th April 2025 — first dynamic content about the book release (25% Discount with Bloomsbury — Code: SHS25). Support the showCheck out my YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSuCiCzcPlAvxzQyHDrLoag Book a FREE 30 minute coaching 'taster' session HERE: https://calendly.com/lucymeggeson/30minute Fancy getting your hands on my FREE PDF 'The Top 10 Most Irritating Questions That Single People Get Asked On The Regular...& How To (Devilishly) Respond'? Head over to: www.lucymeggeson.com Interested in my 1-1 Coaching? Work with me HERE: https://www.lucymeggeson.com/workwithme Join my private Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1870817913309222/?ref=share Follow me on Instagram: @spinsterhoodreimagined Follow me on Twitter: @LucyMeggeson Follow me on LinkedIn: Lucy Meggeson Email me: lucy@lucymeggeson.com And thank you so much for listening!!!

The Trump White House re-launched the govenrment's official COVID-19 website on Friday. The revamped site blames the origins of the coronavirus on a lab leak in China while criticizing former President Joe Biden, former top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization. The website is also critical of steps like social distancing, mask mandates and lockdowns. Jimmy and Americans' Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss how not even this level of government sanctioned critique of the nation's COVID policy will be sufficient to shake some hopeless deadenders in the media and comedy community who refuse to engage in even the most cursory reexamination of their mistaken views over the pandemic. Plus segments on British political commentator Douglas Murray's savage takedown of… British political commentator Douglas Murray, Trump's all-out assault on academic freedom and Chinese commentators' better understanding of the United States than Americans'. Also featuring Stef Zamorano!

More of the craziest reviews on the internet! We find out all about a formerly grand hotel, that may have turned into meth den, where people watch you sleep. A Canadian mall with a heavy emphasis on Chinese meat stores & customers who get slapped by employees. A gay bar that seems to prefer certain kinds of customers & much more!!Join comedians James Pietragallo and Jimmie Whisman as they explore the most opinionated part of the internet: The Reviews Section!Subscribe and we will see you every Monday with Your Stupid Opinions!!!Don't forget to rate & review!!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Episode 411 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Shehzad Qazi of China Beige Book about the impact Trump's China tariffs are having on the U.S. and Chinese economies and prospects for a grand bargain. Demetri and Shehzad discuss: The material impact that the trade war has had thus far on both economies The companies and sectors most likely to be impacted, as well as those best positioned to weather the storm The respective performance of each country's currency and stock market Explanations for the punctuated sell-off in U.S. Treasuries China's action plan to revitalize domestic consumption Demetri also asks Shehzad about Trump's stated desire to “do a deal with China,” what such a deal would look like, how big it could be, and what concessions either side is prepared to make in order to get it done. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 04/16/2025

In 399 AD, Faxian, a 62-year old Chinese monk set out for India. His goal was to find and copy sacred Buddhist scripts that were missing or falling apart in his homeland. The result would be an epic 13-year journey through 30 kingdoms. Faxian's account of his journey is one of the earliest and most complete of India in this time period. Check out History Dispatches at HistoryDispatches.com The Explorers Podcast is part of the Airwave Media Network: www.airwavemedia.com Interested in advertising on the Explorers Podcast? Email us at advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To become a follower of Jesus, visit: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/MeetJesus (NOT a Morning Mindset resource) ⇒ TODAY'S DAILY SPONSOR: Today's episode is sponsored by a podcast called Thundering Legion. If you would like to be a part of advancing the gospel in the armed forces of every nation, and help build a community of armed forces members for the purpose of mutual encouragement and accountability, you should check out Thundering Legion. You can find the podcast at https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/ThunderingLegion You can sponsor a daily episode of the Morning Mindset too, by going to https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/DailySponsor ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: Mark 2:18–22 - [18] Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” [19] And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. [20] The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. [21] No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. [22] And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” (ESV) ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ FINANCIALLY SUPPORT THE MORNING MINDSET: (not tax-deductible) -- Become a monthly partner: https://mm-gfk-partners.supercast.com/ -- Support a daily episode: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/daily-sponsor/ -- Give one-time: https://give.cornerstone.cc/careygreen -- Venmo: @CareyNGreen -- Support our SPANISH TRANSLATION: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/supportSpanish -- Support our HINDI TRANSLATION: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/supportHindi -- Support our CHINESE TRANSLATION: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/supportChinese  ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ FOREIGN LANGUAGE VERSIONS OF THIS PODCAST: SPANISH version: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/Spanish HINDI version: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/Hindi CHINESE version: https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/Chinese  ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ CONTACT: Carey@careygreen.com  ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ THEME MUSIC: “King’s Trailer” – Creative Commons 0 | Provided by https://freepd.com/ ***All NON-ENGLISH versions of the Morning Mindset are translated using A.I. Dubbing and Translation tools from DubFormer.ai ***All NON-ENGLISH text content (descriptions and titles) are translated using the A.I. functionality of Google Translate.

Adversary nations are using ClickFix in cyber espionage campaigns. Japan's Financial Services Agency issues an urgent warning after hundreds of millions in unauthorized trades. The critical Erlang/OTP's SSH vulnerability now has public exploits. A flawed rollout of a new Microsoft Entra app triggers widespread account lockouts.  The alleged operator of SmokeLoader malware faces federal hacking charges. A new scam blends social engineering, malware, and NFC tech to drain bank accounts. GSA employees may have been oversharing sensitive documents. Yoni Shohet, Co-Founder and CEO of Valence Security, who cautions financial organizations of coming Chinese open source AI. Crosswalks in the crosshairs of satirical hacking. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest We are joined by Yoni Shohet, Co-Founder and CEO of Valence Security, discussing how the onslaught of more open source AI tools coming out of China will be difficult to manage for companies especially those in the financial sector. Selected Reading North Korea, Iran, Russia-Backed Hackers Deploy ClickFix in New Attacks (Hackread) Countries Shore Up Their Digital Defenses as Global Tensions Raise the Threat of Cyberwarfare (SecurityWeek) Japan warns of hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized trades from hacked accounts (The Record) Critical Erlang/OTP SSH RCE bug now has public exploits, patch now (Bleeping Computer) Widespread Microsoft Entra lockouts tied to new security feature rollout (Bleeping Computer) Alleged SmokeLoader malware operator facing federal charges in Vermont (The Record) New payment-card scam involves a phone call, some malware and a personal tap (The Record) Sensitive files, including White House floor plans, shared with thousands (The Washington Post) Hacking US crosswalks to talk like Zuck is as easy as 1234 (The Register)  Share your feedback. We want to ensure that you are getting the most out of the podcast. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey as we continually work to improve the show.  Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at cyberwire@n2k.com to request more info. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did Britain create a violent monopoly on opium production in India in the 1700s? What was the Opium Agency? Why did Chinese elites use opium during sex?  Anita and William discuss how the East India Company competed with other traders to sell Indian opium to China despite it being outlawed…  _____________ Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members' chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com.  Empire UK Live Tour: The podcast is going on a UK tour! William and Anita will be live on stage in Glasgow, Birmingham, York and Bristol, discussing how the British Empire continues to shape our everyday lives. Tickets are on sale NOW, to buy yours head to empirepoduk.com. Email: empire@goalhanger.com Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Foreign governments are selling large quantities of Treasury securities, including the Chinese. Several commentators have therefore suggested there is a growing probability China devalues the yuan. While all of these results and possibilities are indeed related, not all foreigners are selling dollar assets. According to the same data, this group has been a buying hand over fist. Eurodollar University's conversation w/Steve Van Metrehttps://www.eurodollar.universityTwitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_EDU

Last time we spoke about Operation Nekka, the Invasion of Rehe Province. In 1932, the Kwantung Army eyed Rehe province as vital for Manchukuo's success. General Tang Yulin, ruling Rehe, initially favored Japanese interests due to economic ties, particularly in opium. Tensions escalated after a Japanese civilian was abducted, prompting military actions that led to skirmishes in Shanhaiguan. Amidst growing conflict, Zhang Xueliang mobilized forces against Tang, who eventually conceded. As Japan prepared for invasion, both sides strategized, with Chiang Kai-Shek reluctant to engage directly, fearing Japanese influence over his rivals. Operation Nekka commenced, showcasing the Kwantung Army's efficiency as they swiftly routed Chinese forces in Rehe. By March 4th, key passes were captured, but fierce resistance emerged. General Nishi faced counterattacks, leading to strategic retreats. Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-Shek struggled with internal conflicts while managing the Japanese threat. As the Kwantung Army pushed beyond the Great Wall, logistical issues arose, prompting political maneuvers to secure local warlord alliances. However, plans faltered when Zhang Qingyao, a potential ally, was assassinated.   #147 The Battle for the Great Wall of China Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Thus in the previous episode, Operation Nekka had been unleashed. The Kwangtung Army tossed 2 divisions into Rehe province with the intent of forcing its annexation into Manchukuo. They were under strict orders to not extend operations past the Great Wall of China. However they believed it was necessary to seize the main gateways along the Great Wall of China to establish their new borders, and in order to do so this absolutely required going past them. Yet military operations were not the only means to secure their goals. The Japanese forces faced significant logistical challenges, including a shortage of troops, having advanced into Rehe with only 20,000 men. Even the most resolute general in the Kwantung Army doubted that their military strength could prevail against the vast numbers of Chinese troops in the plains of Hubei. As a result, they needed to supplement their military efforts with political strategies targeting regional warlords. The tactic of bribing local elites had proven highly effective during the pacification of Manchuria, and there was no reason to think it wouldn't work in North China as well. All of these actions were carried out without any oversight from Tokyo headquarters.   On February 13, 1933, Itagaki Seishiro, who was then the head of the Mukden Special Service Agency, was transferred to the General Staff without any formal announcement of his promotion. He took up a position in Tientsin specifically to initiate political maneuvers in eastern Hubei, leading to the establishment of the Tientsin Special Service Agency. Initially, this agency sought to engage various competing warlords in North China, including Duan Qirui, Wu Peifu, and Sun Chuanfang, but eventually focused on Zhang Qingyao. Zhang had previously been a protégé of Duan Qirui, serving as the civil and military governor of Henan province. He had fought against Zhang Zuolin in 1925 before shifting his allegiance to Wu Peifu. During the second phase of the Northern Expedition, Zhang Qingyao again battled Zhang Zuolin, who was then in control of the National Pacification Army. After the Northern Expedition concluded, he allied with Yan Xishan's forces in Shanxi. So yeah it would seem he was not a man of principles nor loyalties of any kind. The Tientsin Special Service Agency initially aimed to approach Zhang Qingyao in hopes that he could orchestrate a coup d'état against Chiang Kai-Shek. They also hoped to persuade other figures such as Song Queyuan, Zhang Zuoxiang, Fang Chenwu, Xu Yusan, Zhang Tingshu, Sun Tienying, and Feng Zhanhai to join in. If successful, this could lead to a swift takeover of North China as they were advancing towards Peiping after taking the Great Wall. However, on May 7, Zhang Qingyao was assassinated, completely derailing their plans. With Zhang Qingyao dead, the agency concentrated their efforts instead to instigate riots in the Peiping-Tientsin region. They also began encouraging and propping up new political organizations that sought to form an independent northern regime. One scheme they were performing was to form a committee composed of Northern Warlords headed by Lu Zengyu, a banker who had studied in Japan. The idea was to form an anti-Chiang Kai-Shek coalition to carve out north china. The agency received a significant amount of funds to make ends meet. Itagaki alone would spend over 50,000 yen to try and bring about an anti-Chiang regime in the north. Some sources indicated over 3 billion yen being allocated to the IJA to be dished out to various Chinese warlords and elites in the form of bribes.  Meanwhile operations in the district east of the Luan River saw attacks formed against the Xumenzhai and Lengkou gateways. On April 1st, the Kwantung Army issued Order 491, seeing the Iwata detachment of the IJA 6th Division storm through the Xumenzhai gate and succeed in securing a supply route behind the great wall to help with the assaults against the other gateways in the region. By April 10th, the IJA 6th Division was making steady progress against the Lengkou gate. The next day they stormed through and captured Qienqangying, pursuing the retreating Chinese to the banks of the Luan River. Meanwhile the IJA 8th Division were facing a much more difficult situation. On the 12th, they captured Xifengkou, but their assault against Quehlingkou was going nowhere. After repeated assaults, the Chinese finally retreated, allowing the Japanese to focus on Taitouying. Thus from the 10th to the 23rd the gateways in northeastern Hubei were all falling into Japanese hands. The Kawahara Brigade was well on its way towards Nantienmen. The Operations within the Great Wall area had been fully authorized by Generals Nishi and Sakamoto. However there still existed limits upon the operations. For example, Operations order 495 issued by General Muto given on the 11th stated "Without specific orders, pursuit by the main force of ground troops is to be limited to the line connecting Hotung, Chiench'angying, and T'ait'ouying; but air units are to be limited to the Luan River."  Meanwhile the Special Service Agency in Tientsin had reported that Zhang Qingyao would stage a coup on the 21st and this prompted Song Queyuans troops to prevent the Central Army forces from fleeing towards Peiping. The Agency requested that the Kwantung Army not return to the Great Wall and instead perform a feint attack towards Peiping and Tientsin to scare the Chinese. As the plot was reaching its climax, on the 18th the Kwantung Army chief of staff, General Koiso Kuniaki issued a order for the 8th Division to strike in full force against the Gubeikou area. The Kwantung Army's plan was to bomb Miyun while launching their feint attack in combination with an all out effort to break Gubeikou. However on the night of the 18th, all of these plans changed dramatically. Suddenly General Muto issued Operations Order 498, hastily ordering all forces to withdraw to the Great Wall. Emperor Hirohito had decided to put his foot down. In Tokyo the emperor asked the vice chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Mazaki Jinzaburö, "Has the Kwantung Army withdrawn from the Luan River line?" The vice chief retired from the imperial presence with a sense of guilt and wrote a confidential letter to the commander of the Kwantung Army. It was personally carried by Infantry Captain Katö [Michio] of the General Staff, who on April 19 arrived at the capital [of Manchukuo] bearing an imperial rescript. The vice chief also cabled to the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army a highly confidential dispatch, the main point of which stated, "Withdraw your troops immediately, or an imperial command will be issued." Thereupon the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army directed staff officer Endò Saburò to draft the withdrawal order. Thus as a result, the Kwantung Army began a withdrawal on the 21st, the same day the Peiping coup was to be unleashed. Those around Emperor Hirohito at this time have gone on the record to state it seemed to them, the emperor had hesitated heavily on issuing the withdrawal order. His motivations for giving the order are simply, the Kwantung Army had gone against his decrees, it was an identical situation to what had happened at Mukden in 1931. The Kwantung Army had no choice but to submit to what essentially was him “asking them to stop”. With that, operations east of the Luan River were over, for now. The order was certainly a critical blow to the Agency in Tientsin. How did they react? They doubled down on the coup effort. Likewise Koiso did not stop the 8th Division operation at Gubeikou. Instead the 8th Division was given orders "to maintain a menacing attitude toward hostile forces in North China." In accordance, the 3800 man Kawahara Brigade on direct orders from General Nishi, launched an attack against two Central Army Divisions numbered nearly 30,000 men stationed at Nantienmen. After a brutal week of battle the Kawahara Brigade seized the town. Meanwhile a battalion of 280 men led by Colonel Shimmura Eijiro attacked a central army force around 4000 strong at Xinglong. They suffered a 38% rate of casualties by the night of the 27th. The Battalion was nearly annihilated when suddenly the Chinese withdrew enabling the Japanese to slip by. Meanwhile the Piping coup did not materialize as planned on the 21st. Instead a secondary coup was initiated by Zhang Zuoxiang on the 26, but this misfired greatly. Reports began to emerge that troops led by Zhang Tingxu, Sun Tienying, Feng Zhanhai and Xu Yusan were willing to rebel in response to the failed coup attempts, but this proved completely false. A report issued on the 30th stated troops under Fang Chenwu were rebelling against Chiang Kai-Shek. However in reality Fang Chenwu only advanced his force north on May 10th and it was to join the anti-Japanese forces.  From mid April to mid May, the United States, Britain, France and Germany finally entered the fray in North China. It was an extremely chaotic situation for everyone. The Japanese military in Tokyo had no control nor idea what the Kwantung Army was doing, so when they tried to explain their actions to the international community, they continuously were walking over rakes. All the talk from Tokyo seemed incomprehensible to the other great powers. The Chinese were clamouring the entire time for a ceasefire agreement, but lacked the means to force the Japanese to do so. Japan had left the League of Nations, thus was extremely isolated and insecure in regards to foreign relations. Thus if a nation like Britain or the US had actually put their foot down, the Japanese more than likely would have backed off. Another element to this debacle was the stance of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who had made it adamantly clear they had zero intention of fighting off the British or Americans because of their unruly siblings within the Army. However, both Britain and America were too preoccupied with internal strife, mostly the result of the Great Depression, to devote considerable effort to the crisis in China. The League of Nations remained completely useless during the North China incident, similarly to how they were useless with the Manchurian incident. The Lytton Commission had performed an on the spot inquiry, and it did play a role in establishing a ceasefire by the time of the Shanghai incident, but did nothing to really help China. China had begun appealing to the League when Shanhaiguan was attacked and this prompted the nations of the league to rapidly agree to the Lytton Commission report's recommendations. In turn this led Matsuoka Yosuke to walk out on the league. With Japan out of the League, Wellington Koo proposed harsh sanctions upon Japan in response to their invasion of Rehe province. Yet they did nothing. China would continuously make pleas, but it was to no avail.  Rather than rely upon the League, the Chinese began secret talks with Japanese officials aiming first for a ceasefire. Tang Erho, Lee Shuzheng and Wang Komin attempted talks, but failed. Then Chen Yi the political vice minister of military affairs, secretly spoke with Nemoto Hiroshi, an army attache at the Shanghai legation on April 27th. They established negotiations with Nemoto speaking on behalf of the Kwantung Army and Chen Yi on behalf of Ho Yingqin. The Chinese were clearly more eager than the Japanese for a ceasefire, but the Japanese no longer had a rationale to continue their operation. Regardless the Japanese took the victors stance and demanded the Chinese withdraw from the battlefield as a prerequisite to further Japanese advances. In the first meeting, Nemoto told Chen that the Kwantung Army had already withdrawn from the area east of the Luan River to give Ho Yingqin an opportunity to consider a ceasefire. He described the action as a friendly gesture and suggested the Chinese reciprocate it by withdrawing their troops. Chen countered this by claiming Ho Yingqin had shown his own sincerity at the battle of Nantienmen by ordering his troops to withdraw to a second line of defense, hoping this would allow the Japanese to pull away from Nantienmen. However by May 1st, the Japanese claimed they had captured and secured Nantienmen, so Nemoto informed Chen the Chinese forces north of the Great Wall should withdraw to a line connecting Miyun, Pinkou, Yutien and the Luan River. On May 2nd, the Chinese sent a reply to this, completely ignoring the line idea and instead referred to the recent battle at Xinglong and explained the local commander there was eager for a victory and refused to withdraw despite being asked twice to do so. The Chinese also notified Nemoto that a Political affairs council headed by Huang Fu was being established at Peiping, and it should be through that body that further negotiations were held. The Japanese welcomed this development. Just as it seemed the Shanghai talks were paving a way to a ceasefire, the leadership of the Kwantung Army abandoned their political maneuvers in favor of a settlement. On April 30th the Tientsin Special Service Agency insisted to their Japanese colleagues, the Chinese were just buying time and not sincere in their actions. That same day the Army General Staff and Foreign Ministry suddenly refused to initiate a ceasefire on the grounds the Chinese had agreed to an armistice only to save face. Lt Colonel Nagatsu Sahishige, the army attache at Peiping urged the 8th Division to rapidly strike southwards as far as Miyun to annihilate He Yingqin's planned counteroffensive. Such an action would immediately threaten the Peiping-Tientsin region. To push the envelope, the Japanese could toss a new Division into the mix and force further negotiations when the Chinese withdrew south of Miyun. Clearly the Japanese had their eyes set on Miyun now. As such General Nishi was secretly told to capture it without any direction from Tokyo HQ, nor from most of the Kwantung Army leadership. The Operations department of the Kwantung Army also independently elected to move troops east of the Luan River again. They argued "the enemy again advances east of the Luan River and persists in its defiant attitude. Therefore we must again deal them a crushing blow." The IJA 6th Division had been evacuated to the Great Wall back on April 23rd and along the way were closely pursued by Chinese forces. General Sakamoto sent a plan to the Kwantung Army headquarters "to again drive the enemy west of the Luan River,". A lot of chaos was reigning within the Japanese military because they were in echo chambers and not relaying information to another. When the Kwantung Army Operations department suddenly proposed a new advance east of the Luan River, on May 2nd a heated exchange took place between them and the Kwantung Army Intelligence Section: “INTELLIGENCE SECTION: The defiant attitude of the enemy is a matter of degree. While it is indisputable that some of their forces continue defiant, their main force is still stationed west of the Luan River. Therefore, a defiant attitude on the part of the enemy is not sufficient reason to deal them a crushing blow. The Kwantung Army withdrew from the Luan River line only ten days ago. As we understand it, the purpose was to comply with the imperial wish. If the army begins operations on a flimsy pretext at this time, inviting intervention by the central leadership, how can the honor of the commander in chief be maintained? What we should now attack are rather the enemy forces facing the 8th Division. For this, we should employ additional strength. By dealing a severe blow to the Chinese Central Army forces in this area, we can threaten Peiping and the operation should be all the more effective.  OPERATIONS SECTION: Due to the limitations of our supply capacity, we cannot use more than a certain level of forces against the enemy facing the 8th Division. Since the enemy east of the Luan River maintains a defiant attitude, they must be punished regardless of their strength.  INTELLIGENCE SECTION: Since the seizure of Nant'ienmen the 8th Division lacks the capability of pursuing the enemy. This is an unavoidable consequence of the small strength of its force from the outset of the operation. Isn't the First [Operations] Section uncertain that the enemy can be defeated even by the main force of the 8th Division, and doesn't it intend ultimately to deploy the 6th Division southward in concert with action by the 8th Division? If this is the case, it is understandable, and this section is not necessarily against it.   OPERATIONS SECTION: That is not what this section is considering.  INTELLIGENCE SECTION: In that case, there is no clear justification for launching the operation. The objective of the operation must be plainly spelled out to all concerned, from His Majesty at the top down to the lowest private. There must not be the slightest doubt about it.” After this conversation the Intelligence department debated amongst themselves before relaying another response at midnight, ultimately not approving it. The next day the Operations department sent a telegram to the negotiations team in Peiping: “1) Under present conditions, the Kwantung Army has no intention of accepting a cease-fire proposal for the time being, particularly because there are signs suggesting intervention by third countries in the matter.  2) Previously the Kwantung Army suggested the Miyun-Yiit'ienLuan River line as the retreat line for the Chinese army; but this did not mean it was to be their front line after a cease-fire. It rather indicated a line to which the Chinese army should immediately and voluntarily retreat as evidence of their sincerity. In other words, a cease-fire cannot be negotiated until they retreat to this line and abandon their provocative attitude, and until this is confirmed by the Kwantung Army. Their mere retreat to the indicated line, in today's circumstances, is not sufficient reason for us to respond to the cease-fire proposal. According to Peking telegram 483 [not identified], it appears that the intentions of our army have been somewhat misunderstood. Even if the Chinese retreat to the indicated line and display the sincerity of their intentions, we may possibly demand a retreat line farther south. We believe negotiations in this region should be handled by the central leadership in Tokyo rather than by the Kwantung Army. Act on this understanding.”   So after this message, the Intelligence department accused the Operations department of trying to find any excuse to renew the advance and sent a wire to Nemoto on April 29th "If the Chinese suddenly perceive their mistake, . . . we will not make war for the fun of it." However the Intelligence department was suddenly overruled by Colonel Kita who cabled the negotiators that the Operations department now had full approval from Kwantung Army vice chief of staff Okamura Yasuji. When General Muto received this notice he questioned "This draft order, states that the enemy has moved into the region east of the Luan River and is showing a provocative attitude. I did not receive such a report from the Second [Intelligence] Section before my departure from Hsinching. Does this mean there has been a subsequent change in the situation?" After being informed more so, Muto simply stated he wished to wait until the chief of staff could speak to him. Obviously Muto was getting wet feet and did not want to perform any actions not in accordance with Tokyo HQ, as Emperor Hirohito had put his foot down.  On May 3rd, General Koiso and Operations Department staff officer Endo Saburo spoke with Muto, indicating they had approval of Tokyo HQ general staff and even the Emperor. So Muto relented for a second advance and issued Order 503 on May 3rd to the IJA 6th and 8th Divisions. Now the Army General Staff were dragged into the Kwantung Army's debacle fully. So they drew up an emergency draft plan for measures in North China. To this aim:  “Through continuing pressure by the military might of the Kwantung Army, applied in concert with various political measures in North China, the Chinese forces in North China are to be compelled to make a substantia] surrender or to dissolve, thereby resulting in the withdrawal of the Chinese army along the China-Manchukuo border and in the establishment of peace in this area”.  Added to this the General Staff suggested a large counteroffensive be driven along the Great Wall and a formal truce agreement should be concluded once three conditions had been met: “(a) that Chinese forces had retreated voluntarily south and west of a line connecting Hsuanhua, Shunyi, Sanho, Yüt'ien, Luanchou, and Lot'ing; (b) that anti-Japanese activities had been controlled; and (c) that the preceding had been verified by the Japanese army”. Under immense pressure from the renewed Japanese advance, the Chinese government on May 3rd, had pushed for a new body to tackle the North China situation. That was the Peiping Political Affairs Council. It was composed of 22 members, headed by Huang Fu. Huang Fu was notably a pro-Japanese official, having been a graduate of the Tokyo Land Survey department training institute and had served early as a minister of foreign affairs. Since China had zero faith anymore in the League of Nations and believed if they failed to resolve the North China issue, this all might see a new civil war break out between Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Jingwei. Thus everyone felt the time for active resistance was over and they must place all their effort into negotiations. Chiang Kai-Shek placed a great amount of authority upon Huang Fu and trusted the man. Huang Fu began his new task by speaking with all the political and financial leaders from both sides of the conflict to see how a real ceasefire could be met through dealmaking.  Meanwhile on May 6th the IJA 6th Division unleashed a new offensive south of the Great Wall and were followed by the 8th Division on the 11th. General Muto at this time made public statements blaming the Chinese for the renewed hostilities, making it seem the Japanese had intended to stay within the Great Wall area. The 6th Division swept across the sector east of the Luan River and by the 11th the Chinese defensive line collapsed. On the 12th the 6th Division crossed the Luan River, pursuing Yu Xuechengs 51st Army. In turn this threatened He Yingqin's main force who were facing the 8th Division. In the previous battles, Yu Xuechengs men had performed quite poorly and now even under direct command of He Yingqin were proving themselves helpless against the 6th division. Additionally Itagaki's agency over in Tientsin were using radio facilities to dispatch false directives from Chinese high command, ordering the forces to retreat from the front battle line. Two to three Chinese divisions were neutralized by these fake radio messages and in turn the Chinese became very demoralized at their lines. The 8th division had driven into the Gubeikou area on the 11th and it took them only a day to dislodge the Chinese from their line near Xuxiachen. By the 13th Xuxiachen had fallen completely. On the 11th and 12th, Japanese aircraft began flying over Peiping, as a demonstration of the terror they could deliver to the city at any moment. These developments altogether were pushing the Chinese civilians to demand of their politicians and generals that they appease the Japanese. Huang Fu proposed to Nemoto on the 12th that all Chinese troops could be withdrawn from Miyun to a line extending from Shunyi to Yutien and Tangshan. This was an enormous concession and nearly mirrored the line the Japanese had demanded.  The Japanese however, rejected the concession. To make matters worse for the Chinese, He Yingqin had been notified of the large concession proposal in advance and expected the Japanese to take it. Thus he had refrained from operating in strength at Miyun and did not significantly defend the path towards Peiping. It was the belief of the Japanese commanders, if they performed a full-scale attack towards Peiping now, He Yingqin would have no choice but to withdraw towards Shunyi. With this in mind the Japanese made a proposal on the 14th:  “1) According to the reports of the Peiping military attaché, the 8th Division should be prepared to advance in a single sweep to the southern limit of Miyun, if it is deemed necessary. Preparations for this attack should be expedited.  2) In conjunction with the above, front-line aircraft should take actions implying that a major Japanese offensive is about to begin.  3) In Tokyo, it should be announced publicly, in liaison with the Foreign Ministry, that the security of Jehol province cannot be guaranteed as long as the Chinese army remains in Miyun. Furthermore, every so often Japanese aircraft should make demonstration flights over the Shunyi-T'ungchou area.” Confronted with this, the Chinese were pretty screwed. The Chinese negotiations team were frantically searching for any way to force a ceasefire. Then the secretary of the Shanghai legation, Suma Yakichiro showed up to Peiping, which the Chinese viewed as a golden opportunity. The Chinese complained to him that the Kwantung Army had resumed their offensive and that a political agency in Tientsin were trying to enact coups. Suma bluntly told them the Japanese actions were backed fully by Tokyo and despite the Chinese belief that this was false or that Japan was facing a major financial deficit, this was all untrue.  While the dialogue continued to go nowhere, the 6th division had pursued the Chinese forces to the vicinity of Fengjun. Muto believed this had gone to far so he issued orders on May 13th limiting operations to the area north of a line connecting Miyun, Pingkou, Fegjun and Yungping. Now the 6th and 8th divisions were to assemble around Xuxiachen and Zunhua. Two days later he issued this statement to the public "If the Chinese army immediately abandons its hitherto provocative attitude and withdraws some distance from the border, our army will quickly return to the line of the Great Wall and pursue its regular task of maintaining security in Manchukuo." Likewise Muto ordered the Tientsin group to inform the Chinese that the Kwantung Army would return to the Great Wall if the Chinese forces retreated to the Shunyi-Yutien-Tangshan line. Nemoto forwarded all of this to Chen Yi. On May 15th He Yingqin ordered the withdrawal of the Chinese forces to a line between Malanyu, Linnantsang and Pamencheng.  With what seemed a imminent ceasefire at hand, the Kwantung Army HQ ordered the 6th and 8th divisions to take up positions strategically favorable for the negotiations to finally begin in ernest. On the 17th a draft ceasefire plan was drawn up. It envisioned the withdrawal of the Chinese forces to the Shunyi-Yutien-Tangshan line and in return the Japanese would pull back to the Great Wall area. Huang Fu was on his way back to Peiping from Shanghai for probably the 10th time in two weeks, when the Japanese captured Fengjun and Zhunhua, routing the Chinese across the Qi Canal to the right bank of the Pai River. The 6th Division then advanced towards Yutien and Xumenchen as the 8th division stood around Xuxiachn. When the Chinese began retreating from Miyun on May 18th, the 8th division suddenly converged upon Miyun. Muto was of course delighted by their new advantageous position and even briefly began talking to his colleagues about the prospect of just marching upon Peiping. Instead he decided to sweep through Miyun, Pingku and the Qi Canal, going even further west than he had stated he would back on the 13th.  With these new orders in hand, the 6th Division quickly captured Qixien on the 19th and further pursued retreating Chinese forces to Sanho. The 8th Division entered Miyun and two days later began advancing to Huaijou. By the 23rd Huaijou had fallen as the 6th Division reached the Qi Canal. These advances threatened the Peiping-Tientsin region. Both Japanese divisions halted on the 25th as the ceasefire was issued. With that last strike Muto felt he had significantly increased their poker hand going forward. Meanwhile Itagaki's team at Tientsin were still trying to bring about a coup. In tandem with the 8th Divisions attack on Miyun, the agency tried to engineer a revolt by the militia troops led by Song Queyuan, Fang Chenwu, Sun Tienying, amongst others. The idea was for these forces to occupy Peiping while wrecking havoc upon the Chinese central army within th region. The agency had attempting recruiting Wu Peifu, but the old jade marshal was unwilling, so they turned to this former protege, the chairman of Hubei, Yu Xuecheng. However he also declined. Yu Xuecheng was also approached by Hu Hanmin, looking to form an anti-Chiang Kai-Shek campaign in cooperation with Han Fuqu and Feng Yuxiang. To this Yu Xuecheng declined as well. Itagaki kept searching for disgruntled warlords, and then turned to Li Qiashan and Xu Yusan. Xu Yusan was a former ally to Feng Yuxiang with a history of anti-Chiang Kai-Shek actions. If they got the backing of his personal army, roughly 10,000 men strong at Tangshan they could do some real damage. On May 16th Xu Yusan declared independence and took up the Manchukuo 5 color flag in direct opposition to the Kuomintang. He began issuing the slogan “Hubi for the people of Hubei” as his army marched west along the Peiping-Shanhaiguan railway. His force reached the vicinity of Tangu whereupon they had increased to 30,000 and rumors emerged they would occupy Tientsin. This began a mass panic. . . for literally a day. His army collapsed into nothing more than a rabble as now had the stomach to actually fight their fellow countrymen.  Despite this grand failure, the Tientsin group continued with other plots. At 8 pm on May 19th, a Peiping bound train from Tangu, carrying Chinese soldiers was bombed around Tientsin station. The Japanese love bombing trains as we all know. This resulted in small incidents involving Japanese and Chinese officials, giving precedent for 600 Japanese troops led by Lt General Nakamura Kotaro to reinforce Tientsin on May 23rd. There were a few other incidents were supposedly Chinese agents were tossing grenades at Japanese officials. One of these officials was Major Mori Takeshi of the Japanese Army General Staff who was working in Tientsin. However the grenade thrown at him was a dud, and before the Japanese could seize it, some local Chinese grabbed it, finding a stamp on it bearing “Tokyo Artillery Arsenal”, oops.  These numerous incidents influenced the Chinese who feared Japan was trying to force an invasion into North China. To these rumors, He Yingqin insisted they mount a proper defense of Peiping, but many were arguing they had to further retreat. Meanwhile the Tientsin agency was told to stop performing incidents and instead secure northern warlords to their future cause. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The battle for the Great Wall of China was coming to a bitter end for the Chinese forces. The Japanese were using every deceptive measure to edge further and further into China proper. It seemed clear to the Chinese, nothing would stop Japanese encroachment upon their nation, while the rest of the world simply watched on doing nothing. 

The escalating trade dispute between the United States and China has, in the view of my guest today, unofficially crossed the threshold into a full-blown trade war. Wendy Cutler is Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute and a longtime diplomat and negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. We spoke on Friday, April 18, as both countries were rapidly imposing tariffs and counter-tariffs, measures and countermeasures. In our conversation, Wendy explains which of these actions may prove particularly damaging to both the U.S. and Chinese economies. She also breaks down China's diplomatic response, including a recent trip by Xi Jinping to three Southeast Asian countries aimed at shoring up regional trade alliances. Finally, Wendy offers insight into how bad this trade war could get—and identifies potential offramps that might help prevent the worst-case scenarios.`

//The Wire//2200Z April 21, 2025////ROUTINE////BLUF: POPE FRANCIS PASSES AWAY THIS MORNING. CHINA ANNOUNCES LATEST MOVE IN USA/CHINA TRADE WAR.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events-Vatican City: Pope Francis passed away early this morning at the age of 88, following his bout of respiratory illness. The Vatican stated that Pope Francis died at his residence after experiencing a stroke this morning.Switzerland: Klaus Schwab, the founder of the infamous World Economic Forum abruptly announced his resignation from his position as Chair of the forum, along with his seat on the Board of Trustees.AC: No comment was provided on the reason for Schwab stepping aside, and the resignation took effect immediately. However, Schwab had taken a reduced role at the Forum anyway, after handing over most of the day-to-day operations of the organization to Børge Brende back in May of last year.Far East: The trade war between the United States and China continues to expand, with China announcing a new style of retaliatory tariffs. Though the announcement from China's Ministry of Commerce was somewhat vague, the general sentiment is that for any nation that works with the United States regarding their own tariffs, China will impose Chinese tariffs on that nation.AC: If this is what China intends to do, this is a significant development. Taxing a third-party nation simply because that nation is working favorably with the USA, is purely a "friend of my enemy is an enemy" approach to this trade crisis that highlights just how serious Beijing is regarding this situation. In short, this whole affair may just be more serious than it appears at face value.  -HomeFront-Florida: This morning Delta Flight 1213 experienced an engine fire before takeoff in Orlando. The fire occurred as the No. 2 engine was started after pushback from the gate, prompting the inflatable slides to be deployed to evacuate passengers to the taxiway.New Mexico: A local county magistrate judge has resigned following an incident that involved harboring an illegal alien two months ago. Back in February, Cristhian Ortega-Lopez was arrested on a variety of charges at Judge Cano's home, where he had been living.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: The resignation of Judge Cano is not particularly surprising as this judge openly confessed to harboring this illegal alien at his residence. In photos posted to his personal (and public) Facebook page, the judge was also seen in video footage that shows the illegal handling weapons. The reason as to why this two-month-old story is worth mentioning now is due to the quiet "retirement" of the judge at nearly the same time that various court docs claim the illegal was a member of Tren de Aragua (TdA), the infamous gang that has been recently designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). While this development largely went unnoticed by the general public, this FTO designation is no joke. This categorization allows a plethora of tools (to include kinetic targeting efforts) to be used to combat the groups designated as FTOs. It's bad enough for a judge to openly harbor an illegal alien for political purposes, but it's a different thing altogether to harbor someone who's part of a terrorist organization.It is that FTO label that changes the game; it's entirely a different atmosphere to harbor someone with the same designation as Bin Laden. Though this is speculative, this is probably why this judge quietly got shut down and pressured into "retirement". Everyone knows that it's almost impossible to indict a judge for anything at all (even low-level county magistrates), but it's also hard to remain in the public eye after being caught knowingly harboring a federally designated terrorist on US soil, and providing that individual with small arms.Analyst: S2A1Research: https://p

[Ep 25-159] President Trump gave the media and other Leftists the documents on Crossfire Hurricane, and not a single “journalist” has mentioned the lies. He released the JFK files, and nothing. He's now released the covid leak story, and again nothing. BTW, covid wasn't leaked, it was intentionally released by the Chinese with the knowledge of the uniparty to stop Donald Trump's rightful second term. I used to be mad about this, but God made it right.We have so much to discuss and it all the same things. Each week Democrats get closer to their demise, if we can just get Republicans to act. The top story is a ridiculous one. Democrats are all in for an MS-13 dude. Trump baited Democrats into getting in bed with an MS-13 domestic abuser Liberals Warn Enforcing Immigration Law Is A Slippery Slope That May Lead To Enforcing Other LawsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kevin-jackson-show--2896352/support.

EP272In this episode, Jhae and returning in-studio guest Dre Mullins discuss tariffs as it relates to auto sales as a former finance director. Dre gives his input on what may have gone wrong with the Hudson river helicopter crash involving the Siemens CEO, family, and Navy Seal pilot. Then Jhae and Dre recap all events leading to and during the Acura Long Beach Grand Prix weekend that took place April 11 - 13, 2025. 00:00 Introduction 02:00 car parts and tariffs Dre Introduction05:40 Auto loans and tariffs08:30 Low Credit High Risk12:20 Toyota to absorb tariffs and billing rates explained14:40 Chinese factory workers expose US brands on social media16:10 creative dealership techniques to move your money around19:00 NY Post on Honda , Nissan cancels orders for Nissan Rogue22:41 Grand Prix vs Formula 1 experience27:30 Siemens CEO and family die in helicopter crash, what happened?30:00 crew chief screws up Acura NSX33:00 It never rains in Southern California37:00 Acura Lounge at the Grand Prix52:21 Katella Bakery - best bakery in SoCal? 54:47 Watch your kids 57:30 Jordan vs Lebron GOAT discussion1:03:50 Acura brand headed in the right direction1:11:00 Outro and ClosingContact Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning:email: HardParkingPodcast@gmail.comWebsite: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.Hardparkingpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.patreon.com/hardparkingpodcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/hardparkingpod/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/@HardParking ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Links Referenced in this video:https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/nissan-cut-japanese-production-top-selling-us-model-due-tariffs-source-says-2025-04-15/ https://nypost.com/2025/04/15/business/honda-to-boost-manufacturing-in-us-after-trump-tariffs/https://www.gplb.com/

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Business of Biotech MVP Allan Shaw is back to talk about the rise of China's biotech sector, and its evolution from fast follower to global innovation powerhouse. Increased deal activity with Chinese biopharmaceutical companies is injecting new risk into traditional development models in the West, despite an uncertain policy environment in the U.S. vis-à-vis China. Will faster trial starts, cheaper asset upfronts, and a growing talent base slingshot Shanghai's biotech hub into an innovation destination on par with Boston and San Francisco? Access this and hundreds of episodes of the Business of Biotech videocast under the Business of Biotech tab at lifescienceleader.com. Subscribe to our monthly Business of Biotech newsletter. Get in touch with guest and topic suggestions: ben.comer@lifescienceleader.comFind Ben Comer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencomer/

2 - Scott Presler joins us once again for his weekly segment. How do we have any shot of ousting Larry Krasner and other judges? Dom thinks it's understated how big this election is? Would ousting one or more of these judges undermine Shapiro's reign as governor and then his 2028 Presidential election bid? Is there a docuseries team following Scott around? 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 220 - Anybody can be robbed in Washington! A man is dominating women's track events in California. 240 - Revisiting Pope Francis' messaging and The Inquirer's defense of it. Some Gavin Newsome news. 250 - The Lightning Round!

Send us a textMoney talks, but what would it say about you if you suddenly had millions? That's the question that drives this hilarious, thought-provoking conversation about wealth, luxury, and our deepest financial fantasies.We kick things off with a revelation that's rocking the fashion world—Chinese manufacturers are now selling "designer" items for pennies on the dollar, confirming what we've long suspected about luxury markups. When an $80,000 handbag costs under $2,000 to produce, who's really getting played? This leads us down a rabbit hole of absurd luxury purchases, from $38,000 Hermès bags to a one-of-a-kind $6 million Bugatti with custom Hermès leather interior.The heart of our discussion explores what we'd actually do with life-changing money. Would you splurge on a Lamborghini or stick with American muscle cars? Is $10 million enough to walk away from your job forever, or do you need $100 million to truly feel secure? We get brutally honest about our "F*** You Money" numbers and the bad decisions we might make if financial constraints disappeared overnight.Things get real when we imagine waking up to find $123 million suddenly in our bank accounts. The reactions range from panic attacks to outrageous spending fantasies, revealing how unprepared most of us are for sudden extreme wealth. Between fits of laughter, we stumble upon some genuine wisdom about post-wealth clarity and the importance of knowing yourself before the money changes everything around you.Whether you're playing the lottery this weekend or just daydreaming about financial freedom, this episode offers both entertainment and unexpected insight into how we value money, status, and the things we think will make us happy. Give it a listen, then ask yourself: what would YOUR first move be with $123 million?Thanks for listening to the Nobody's Talking Podcast. Follow us on Twitter: (nobodystalking1), Instagram : (nobodystalkingpodcast) and email us at (nobodystalkingpodcast@gmail.com) Thank you!

Today, we're taking you on a cultural tour across Asia — beyond China — to discover how neighboring countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia share traditions, while also celebrating their unique identities. On the show: Niu Honglin & Steve.(04:16) Have you noticed any similarities among different Asian countries?(06:26) In Chinese and many other Asian cultures, using respectful and polite language is very important. Here are some common respectful expressions in Chinese.

This episode we pick up the soy sauce/restaurant kid threads with guest Eddie Lo. Now a food professional himself, Eddie talks about growing up in Chinese restaurant and being raised by amazing cooks, including his grandma, who would make him Hong Shao Rou, a braised pork belly dish.  We talk about growing up in Wisconsin and Southern California eating exclusively Chinese food, having a first hamburger in college, and then never looking back on trying new foods.  Eddie shares how his full throttle into new foods led him to cooking classes, traveling for food, and eventually to the businesses he runs today teaching dumpling classes and promoting premium soy sauce Liv Cook Eat.

Dr John Brandenburg is a plasma physicist and astrophysicist who worked on NASA's Clementine Lunar Mission, before he became interested in NASA images of Mars revealing ancient oceans and artificial structures. In 1986, he first discovered evidence of an ancient ocean on Mars, which he presented at a scientific conference. The ocean's existence was recently confirmed by Chinese scientists studying the recent data from China's Mars rover. By right of discovery NASA would normally name it the Brandenburg Ocean, but Dr. Brandenburg's Mars research has been deliberately sidelined by senior NASA officials who don't want him to gain public recognition.In his second Exopolitics Today interview Dr Brandenburg discusses the Brandenburg Ocean along with evidence of an ancient civilization on Mars that was destroyed in a nuclear holocaust millions of years ago. He discusses how Elon Musk's plan to colonize Mars offers a safe way of disclosing the existence of ancient life on Mars through future archeological digs. He believes that UFO disclosure would follow in a manner that would be less disruptive by using Mars discoveries to prepare the general public for the truth about extraterrestrial life visiting our planet today.Dr. John Brandenburg's X account is: https://x.com/PhdBrandenburg

In Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Margherita Zanasi argues that basic notions of a free market economy emerged in China a century and half earlier than in Europe. In response to the commercial revolutions of the late 1500s, Chinese intellectuals and officials called for the end of state intervention in the market, recognizing its power to self-regulate. They also noted the elasticity of domestic demand and production, arguing in favour of ending long-standing rules against luxury consumption, an idea that emerged in Europe in the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Zanasi challenges Eurocentric theories of economic modernization as well as the assumption that European Enlightenment thought was unique in its ability to produce innovative economic ideas. She instead establishes a direct connection between observations of local economic conditions and the formulation of new theories, revealing the unexpected flexibility of the Confucian tradition and its accommodation of seemingly unorthodox ideas. Margherita Zanasi is Professor of Chinese History at Louisiana State University. She has published widely on different aspects of modern China's history, including her first book Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China (University of Chicago Press, 2005). She also serves as the editor of the journal Twentieth Century China.  Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Man hands joint to police officer during traffic stop and that was just the start to what his car was loaded up with, Ontario woman is at her wits end after squirrels damage a new car after the critters destroyed a previous one, Humans compete with robots in Chinese half marathon

S&P Futures are trading lower this morning however the liquidity is rather low as most exchanges across the globe remine closed for the Easter holiday. Tariff and trade talks remain the key factor for the markets. Discussions on tariffs with South Korea and India are scheduled for this week. President Trump continues to press Fed Chair Powell to lower interest rates which Powell is reluctant to due ahead of a possible increase in inflation this summer. The Justice dept antitrust trial continue today. NFLX is higher this morning after announcing positive earnings results on Thursday. China is warning countries not to make trade deals with the U.S. Huawei Technologies plans to start mass shipments of its AI chip to Chinese customers which is negative for NVDA. The week ahead is a big week for earnings announcements, reports from MMM, MCO, LMT KMB, RTX, VZ, SAP & TSLA are scheduled for tomorrow.

This is is the catch up on 3things by The Indian express and I am Niharika Nanda.Today is the 21st of April and here are today's headlinesToday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the policies that his government is working on are going to shape the future of the next 1,000 years. Addressing an event organised on the occasion of Civil Services Day, Modi said the holistic development of India means no village, no family and no citizen is left behind. He said quote “The policies we are working on today and the decisions we are making are going to shape the future of the next 1,000 years,” unquote.Pope Francis passed away after prolonged illness in Rome today, the Vatican confirmed in a video statement. Cardinal Kevin Ferrell, the Vatican camerlengo announced, quote  “At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church,” unquote.  Pope Francis was hospitalised on 14th February, following complications from bronchitis and was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia four days later.  He spent over a month in medical care before returning to his residence to continue his recovery.Police in Odisha's Jharsuguda district arrested two people allegedly involved in the killing of the father-son duo in neighbouring West Bengal's Murshidabad district during the violence over the Waqf law. The two arrested persons are Bani Israel and Sefaul Haque, residents of Sulitala village under Samserganj police station area of Murshidabad district. On April 11, Hargobindo Das (72) and Chandan Das (40), were allegedly hacked to death in Samserganj block of Murshidabad district.Today, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that ISRO successfully performed the second docking of satellites as part of its Spadex missions. He said more experiments are planned in the next two weeks. The PSLV-C60 / Space Docking Experiment (SPADEX) mission was successfully launched on 30th December 2024. Thereafter the satellites were docked for the first time on 16th January, 16 and successfully undocked on 13th March.China has warned that it would take “resolute and reciprocal” countermeasures against countries that strike trade deals with the United States at the expense of Chinese interests, in the latest escalation of tensions between the world's two largest economies.  The warning came from China's Ministry of Commerce in response to reports that the Trump administration is pressuring nations seeking tariff relief from the US to reduce trade ties with China.  the ministry said in a statement that China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China's interests.That's all for today. This was the CatchUp on 3 Things by The Indian Express.

There's an old Chinese saying “I wish that you live in interesting times.” The irony of this is that “interesting times” are often times of trouble or turmoil, making the phrase more like a curse and boy are we living in interesting times at the moment with Trumps Tariffs creating fear around the world.  It reminds me of the early days of covert when people were uncertain what was ahead. In this “Big Picture” episode of the Michael Yardney Podcast, Pete Wargent and I discuss the current economic climate and its impact on the property markets. making in property investment.   Takeaways    The current economic climate is volatile and affects property investment. Interest rates are expected to drop and this will positively impacting the housing market. Government policies are influencing housing affordability and supply and will only push prices higher. Household wealth in Australia has reached unprecedented levels, but disparities exist. The gap between the haves and have nots is widening in Australia. Foreign investment plays a crucial role in the housing market. Cybersecurity is increasingly important for financial safety. Understanding market dynamics can help investors make informed decisions. Investors should remain calm and not react to daily headlines.   Chapters  00:00 Navigating Market Chaos 04:12 Interest Rates and Economic Impacts 07:09 Household Wealth and Economic Disparities 09:59 Housing Market Dynamics 12:35 Government Policies and Housing Supply 15:37 The Role of Foreign Investment 18:11 Cybersecurity and Financial Safety 20:58 Education and Property Investment Strategies 31:43 Navigating Interesting Times 36:01 Introduction to Real Estate Investment 36:02 Understanding Market Trends   Links and Resources: Metropole's Strategic Property Plan – to help both beginning and experienced investors Get a bundle of free reports and eBooks – www.PodcastBonus.com.au  Pete Wargent's blog Pete Wargent's new book, The Buy Right Approach to Property Investing Pete's other book – The New Wealth Way Also, please subscribe to my other podcast Demographics Decoded with Simon Kuestenmacher – just look for Demographics Decoded wherever you are listening to this podcast and subscribe so each week we can unveil the trends shaping your future.

I think it might be time for another Boston Tea Party. What do you think? Back in the day, our colonist forefathers were peeved that the Brits imposed a tax on them. We didn't even have representation in their government. So what did they do? They dumped tea off the boats and into the Boston harbor. And this wasn't a small event. They disposed of 92,000 pounds (roughly 46 tons) of tea. More than 240 chests full of tea were smashed open with axes and spilled into the water. In today's money, that racked up more than $1,700,000 dollars of damage. This was all over a 3 cent tax per pound on tea. Yes , three cents. And it wasn't considered high for the time. And get this, it wasn't even a new tax. Parliament had introduced it in 1767 as part of the larger “Townshend Revenue Acts.” This imposed tariffs on colonial purchases of molasses, sugar, tea, glass, and some other products. All were canceled after colonial protest — yet the tea tax remained in place. Here's my question: when are Americans going to start dumping imported goods in the harbor? Do you think that the colonists would be putting on a lobster uniform and saluting the King saying we must do as our master says? No, but somehow MAGA - who supposedly hates taxes and big government - are donning a red cap and bending the knee to a man who thinks he's a king and ready and willing to pay 145% in tariffs on Chinese goods. They'll even defend how he tanked the market - because if you're not enjoying watching your 401k circle drain then are you even American? REFERENCES: https://www.progressivepolicy.org/trade-fact-of-the-week-the-trump-campaign-is-proposing-a-higher-tea-tax-than-george-iii/ *** You can check out Ladies Love Politics website to read a transcript/references of this episode at www.ladieslovepolitics.com. Be sure to follow the Ladies Love Politics channel on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Truth Social, Brighteon Social, Threads, and Twitter. Content also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you stream podcasts. Background Music Credit: Music: Hang for Days - Silent Partner https://youtu.be/A41A0XeU2ds

What happens when tariffs threaten to shut down cross-border trade? Join us for an insider's look at the real-world impact of international trade policies! Host Annik dives deep into the complex world of international trade with David Reyes Arteaga, a customs broker expert who reveals the intricate challenges facing importers and exporters in today's volatile global market. Key Insights: 1. Tariff Tsunami

Josh 22:21-23:16, Luke 20:27-47, Ps 89:14-37, Pr 13:17-19

This week, my brother and I are watching the 1981 movie, Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge, a composite of two 1979 episodes of The Amazing Spider-Man where Peter Parker ends up in pre-handover Hong Kong protecting an influential Chinese diplomat.  As far as we could tell, the live action Spider-Man show did not have that much to do with the comics and take a more realistic view of what a man in a spidersuit, albeit one with special powers, could realistically accomplish.  The series is not available on Disney+, unlike many of the other Marvel properties, but you can watch the two year run (1977-1979) on Youtube for free.  The last two episodes ("The Chinese Web") of the series (there are 13 total) form this movie, which oddly enough was only released internationally. Check out Jeremy's work over at Pixel Grotto, CBR.com, and Classic Batman Panels on IG. If you are of the DnD persuasion, his articles on DnD Beyond may be right up your alley, and you can view his entire portfolio here.  You can also check out his latest book, where he is a co-author: Pathfinder Adventure Path: No Breath to Cry as well as an upcoming exploration TTRPG with Three Sail Studios, Mappa Mundi.  Thanks, Jeremy, for coming on the show!  Don't forget that the original hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is available on Etsy!∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well. Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK8lTEQoc_gFollow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.Check it out!As always, thanks for listening!∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞The synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.Check it out!As always, thanks for listening!∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!Like what you see or hear? Consider supporting the show over at Thirteenth Hour Arts on Patreon or adding to my virtual tip jar over at Ko-fi. Join the Thirteenth Hour Arts Group over on Facebook, a growing community of creative people.Have this podcast conveniently delivered to you each week on Spotify,  iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, Tunein, and Googleplay Music.Follow The Thirteenth Hour's Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.Listen to Long Ago Not So Far Away, the Thirteenth Hour soundtrack online at: https://joshuablum.bandcamp.com/ or Spotify.  Join the mailing list for a digital free copy.  You can also get it on CD or tape.Website: https://13thhr.wordpress.comBook trailer: http://bit.ly/1VhJhXYInterested in reading and reviewing The Thirteenth Hour for a free book?  Just email me at writejoshuablum@gmail.com for more details!

So what, exactly, was “The Enlightenment”? According to the Princeton historian David A. Bell, it was an intellectual movement roughly spanning the early 18th century through to the French Revolution. In his Spring 2025 Liberties Quarterly piece “The Enlightenment, Then and Now”, Bell charts the Enlightenment as a complex intellectual movement centered in Paris but with hubs across Europe and America. He highlights key figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, and Franklin, discussing their contributions to concepts of religious tolerance, free speech, and rationality. In our conversation, Bell addresses criticisms of the Enlightenment, including its complicated relationship with colonialism and slavery, while arguing that its principles of freedom and reason remain relevant today. 5 Key Takeaways* The Enlightenment emerged in the early 18th century (around 1720s) and was characterized by intellectual inquiry, skepticism toward religion, and a growing sense among thinkers that they were living in an "enlightened century."* While Paris was the central hub, the Enlightenment had multiple centers including Scotland, Germany, and America, with thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Franklin contributing to its development.* The Enlightenment introduced the concept of "society" as a sphere of human existence separate from religion and politics, forming the basis of modern social sciences.* The movement had a complex relationship with colonialism and slavery - many Enlightenment thinkers criticized slavery, but some of their ideas about human progress were later used to justify imperialism.* According to Bell, rather than trying to "return to the Enlightenment," modern society should selectively adopt and adapt its valuable principles of free speech, religious tolerance, and education to create our "own Enlightenment."David Avrom Bell is a historian of early modern and modern Europe at Princeton University. His most recent book, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. Described in the Journal of Modern History as an "instant classic," it is available in paperback from Picador, in French translation from Fayard, and in Italian translation from Viella. A study of how new forms of political charisma arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the book shows that charismatic authoritarianism is as modern a political form as liberal democracy, and shares many of the same origins. Based on exhaustive research in original sources, the book includes case studies of the careers of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar. The book's Introduction can be read here. An online conversation about the book with Annette Gordon-Reed, hosted by the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, can be viewed here. Links to material about the book, including reviews in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues can be found here. Bell is also the author of six previous books. He has published academic articles in both English and French and contributes regularly to general interest publications on a variety of subjects, ranging from modern warfare, to contemporary French politics, to the impact of digital technology on learning and scholarship, and of course French history. A list of his publications from 2023 and 2024 can be found here. His Substack newsletter can be found here. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, Polish, Russian, German, Croatian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. At the History Department at Princeton University, he holds the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Chair in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, and offers courses on early modern Europe, on military history, and on the early modern French empire. Previously, he spent fourteen years at Johns Hopkins University, including three as Dean of Faculty in its School of Arts and Sciences. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Bell's new project is a history of the Enlightenment. A preliminary article from the project was published in early 2022 by Modern Intellectual History. Another is now out in French History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, in these supposedly dark times, the E word comes up a lot, the Enlightenment. Are we at the end of the Enlightenment or the beginning? Was there even an Enlightenment? My guest today, David Bell, a professor of history, very distinguished professor of history at Princeton University, has an interesting piece in the spring issue of It is One of our, our favorite quarterlies here on Keen on America, Bell's piece is The Enlightenment Then and Now, and David is joining us from the home of the Enlightenment, perhaps Paris in France, where he's on sabbatical hard life. David being an academic these days, isn't it?David Bell: Very difficult. I'm having to suffer the Parisian bread and croissant. It's terrible.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Well, I won't keep you too long. Is Paris then, or France? Is it the home of the Enlightenment? I know there are many Enlightenments, the French, the Scottish, maybe even the English, perhaps even the American.David Bell: It's certainly one of the homes of the Enlightenment, and it's probably the closest that the Enlightened had to a center, absolutely. But as you say, there were Edinburgh, Glasgow, plenty of places in Germany, Philadelphia, all those places have good claims to being centers of the enlightenment as well.Andrew Keen: All the same David, is it like one of those sports games in California where everyone gets a medal?David Bell: Well, they're different metals, right, but I think certainly Paris is where everybody went. I mean, if you look at the figures from the German Enlightenment, from the Scottish Enlightenment from the American Enlightenment they all tended to congregate in Paris and the Parisians didn't tend to go anywhere else unless they were forced to. So that gives you a pretty good sense of where the most important center was.Andrew Keen: So David, before we get to specifics, map out for us, because everyone is perhaps as familiar or comfortable with the history of the Enlightenment, and certainly as you are. When did it happen? What years? And who are the leaders of this thing called the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, that's a big question. And I'm afraid, of course, that if you ask 10 historians, you'll get 10 different answers.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm only asking you, so I only want one answer.David Bell: So I would say that the Enlightenment really gets going around the first couple of decades of the 18th century. And that's when people really start to think that they are actually living in what they start to call an Enlightenment century. There are a lot of reasons for this. They are seeing what we now call the scientific revolution. They're looking at the progress that has been made with that. They are experiencing the changes in the religious sphere, including the end of religious wars, coming with a great deal of skepticism about religion. They are living in a relative period of peace where they're able to speculate much more broadly and daringly than before. But it's really in those first couple of decades that they start thinking of themselves as living in an enlightened century. They start defining themselves as something that would later be called the enlightenment. So I would say that it's, really, really there between maybe the end of the 17th century and 1720s that it really gets started.Andrew Keen: So let's have some names, David, of philosophers, I guess. I mean, if those are the right words. I know that there was a term in French. There is a term called philosoph. Were they the founders, the leaders of the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, there is a... Again, I don't want to descend into academic quibbling here, but there were lots of leaders. Let me give an example, though. So the year 1721 is a remarkable year. So in the year, 1721, two amazing events happened within a couple of months of each other. So in May, Montesquieu, one of the great philosophers by any definition, publishes his novel called Persian Letters. And this is an incredible novel. Still, I think one of greatest novels ever written, and it's very daring. It is the account, it is supposedly a an account written by two Persian travelers to Europe who are writing back to people in Isfahan about what they're seeing. And it is very critical of French society. It is very of religion. It is, as I said, very daring philosophically. It is a product in part of the increasing contact between Europe and the rest of the world that is also very central to the Enlightenment. So that novel comes out. So it's immediately, you know, the police try to suppress it. But they don't have much success because it's incredibly popular and Montesquieu doesn't suffer any particular problems because...Andrew Keen: And the French police have never been the most efficient police force in the world, have they?David Bell: Oh, they could be, but not in this case. And then two months later, after Montesquieu published this novel, there's a German philosopher much less well-known than Montesqiu, than Christian Bolz, who is a professor at the Universität Haller in Prussia, and he gives an oration in Latin, a very typical university oration for the time, about Chinese philosophy, in which he says that the Chinese have sort of proved to the world, particularly through the writings of Confucius and others, that you can have a virtuous society without religion. Obviously very controversial. Statement for the time it actually gets him fired from his job, he has to leave the Kingdom of Prussia within 48 hours on penalty of death, starts an enormous controversy. But here are two events, both of which involving non-European people, involving the way in which Europeans are starting to look out at the rest of the world and starting to imagine Europe as just one part of a larger humanity, and at the same time they are starting to speculate very daringly about whether you can have. You know, what it means to have a society, do you need to have religion in order to have morality in society? Do you need the proper, what kind of government do you need to to have virtuous conduct and a proper society? So all of these things get, you know, really crystallize, I think, around these two incidents as much as anything. So if I had to pick a single date for when the enlightenment starts, I'd probably pick that 1721.Andrew Keen: And when was, David, I thought you were going to tell me about the earthquake in Lisbon, when was that earthquake?David Bell: That earthquake comes quite a bit later. That comes, and now historians should be better with dates than I am. It's in the 1750s, I think it's the late 1750's. Again, this historian is proving he's getting a very bad grade for forgetting the exact date, but it's in 1750. So that's a different kind of event, which sparks off a great deal of commentary, because it's a terrible earthquake. It destroys most of the city of Lisbon, it destroys other cities throughout Portugal, and it leads a lot of the philosophy to philosophers at the time to be speculating very daringly again on whether there is any kind of real purpose to the universe and whether there's any kind divine purpose. Why would such a terrible thing happen? Why would God do such a thing to his followers? And certainly VoltaireAndrew Keen: Yeah, Votav, of course, comes to mind of questioning.David Bell: And Condit, Voltaire's novel Condit gives a very good description of the earthquake in Lisbon and uses that as a centerpiece. Voltair also read other things about the earthquake, a poem about Lisbon earthquake. But in Condit he gives a lasting, very scathing portrait of the Catholic Church in general and then of what happens in Portugal. And so the Lisbon Earthquake is certainly another one of the events, but it happens considerably later. Really in the middle of the end of life.Andrew Keen: So, David, you believe in this idea of the Enlightenment. I take your point that there are more than one Enlightenment in more than one center, but in broad historical terms, the 18th century could be defined at least in Western and Northern Europe as the period of the Enlightenment, would that be a fair generalization?David Bell: I think it's perfectly fair generalization. Of course, there are historians who say that it never happened. There's a conservative British historian, J.C.D. Clark, who published a book last summer, saying that the Enlightenment is a kind of myth, that there was a lot of intellectual activity in Europe, obviously, but that the idea that it formed a coherent Enlightenment was really invented in the 20th century by a bunch of progressive reformers who wanted to claim a kind of venerable and august pedigree for their own reform, liberal reform plans. I think that's an exaggeration. People in the 18th century defined very clearly what was going on, both people who were in favor of it and people who are against it. And while you can, if you look very closely at it, of course it gets a bit fuzzy. Of course it's gets, there's no single, you can't define a single enlightenment project or a single enlightened ideology. But then, I think people would be hard pressed to define any intellectual movement. You know, in perfect, incoherent terms. So the enlightenment is, you know by compared with almost any other intellectual movement certainly existed.Andrew Keen: In terms of a philosophy of the Enlightenment, the German thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to be often, and when you describe him as the conscience or the brain or a mixture of the conscience and brain of the enlightenment, why is Kant and Kantian thinking so important in the development of the Enlightenment.David Bell: Well, that's a really interesting question. And one reason is because most of the Enlightenment was not very rigorously philosophical. A lot of the major figures of the enlightenment before Kant tended to be writing for a general public. And they often were writing with a very specific agenda. We look at Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Now you look at Adam Smith in Scotland. We look David Hume or Adam Ferguson. You look at Benjamin Franklin in the United States. These people wrote in all sorts of different genres. They wrote in, they wrote all sorts of different kinds of books. They have many different purposes and very few of them did a lot of what we would call rigorous academic philosophy. And Kant was different. Kant was very much an academic philosopher. Kant was nothing if not rigorous. He came at the end of the enlightenment by most people's measure. He wrote these very, very difficult, very rigorous, very brilliant works, such as The Creek of Pure Reason. And so, it's certainly been the case that people who wanted to describe the Enlightenment as a philosophy have tended to look to Kant. So for example, there's a great German philosopher and intellectual historian of the early 20th century named Ernst Kassirer, who had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. And he wrote a great book called The Philosophy of the Enlightened. And that leads directly to Immanuel Kant. And of course, Casir himself was a Kantian, identified with Kant. And so he wanted to make Kant, in a sense, the telos, the end point, the culmination, the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. But so I think that's why Kant has such a particularly important position. You're defining it both ways.Andrew Keen: I've always struggled to understand what Kant was trying to say. I'm certainly not alone there. Might it be fair to say that he was trying to transform the universe and certainly traditional Christian notions into the Enlightenment, so the entire universe, the world, God, whatever that means, that they were all somehow according to Kant enlightened.David Bell: Well, I think that I'm certainly no expert on Immanuel Kant. And I would say that he is trying to, I mean, his major philosophical works are trying to put together a system of philosophical thinking which will justify why people have to act morally, why people act rationally, without the need for Christian revelation to bolster them. That's a very, very crude and reductionist way of putting it, but that's essentially at the heart of it. At the same time, Kant was very much aware of his own place in history. So Kant didn't simply write these very difficult, thick, dense philosophical works. He also wrote things that were more like journalism or like tablets. He wrote a famous essay called What is Enlightenment? And in that, he said that the 18th century was the period in which humankind was simply beginning to. Reach a period of enlightenment. And he said, he starts the essay by saying, this is the period when humankind is being released from its self-imposed tutelage. And we are still, and he said we do not yet live in the midst of a completely enlightened century, but we are getting there. We are living in a century that is enlightening.Andrew Keen: So the seeds, the seeds of Hegel and maybe even Marx are incant in that German thinking, that historical thinking.David Bell: In some ways, in some ways of course Hegel very much reacts against Kant and so and then Marx reacts against Hegel. So it's not exactly.Andrew Keen: Well, that's the dialectic, isn't it, David?David Bell: A simple easy path from one to the other, no, but Hegel is unimaginable without Kant of course and Marx is unimagineable without Hegel.Andrew Keen: You note that Kant represents a shift in some ways into the university and the walls of the universities were going up, and that some of the other figures associated with the the Enlightenment and Scottish Enlightenment, human and Smith and the French Enlightenment Voltaire and the others, they were more generalist writers. Should we be nostalgic for the pre-university period in the Enlightenment, or? Did things start getting serious once the heavyweights, the academic heavyweighs like Emmanuel Kant got into this thing?David Bell: I think it depends on where we're talking about. I mean, Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow in Edinburgh, so Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment was definitely at least partly in the universities. The German Enlightenment took place very heavily in universities. Christian Vodafoy I just mentioned was the most important German philosopher of the 18th century before Kant, and he had positions in university. Even the French university system, for a while, what's interesting about the French University system, particularly the Sorbonne, which was the theology faculty, It was that. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, there were very vigorous, very interesting philosophical debates going on there, in which the people there, particularly even Jesuits there, were very open to a lot of the ideas we now call enlightenment. They were reading John Locke, they were reading Mel Pench, they were read Dekalb. What happened though in the French universities was that as more daring stuff was getting published elsewhere. Church, the Catholic Church, started to say, all right, these philosophers, these philosophies, these are our enemies, these are people we have to get at. And so at that point, anybody who was in the university, who was still in dialog with these people was basically purged. And the universities became much less interesting after that. But to come back to your question, I do think that I am very nostalgic for that period. I think that the Enlightenment was an extraordinary period, because if you look between. In the 17th century, not all, but a great deal of the most interesting intellectual work is happening in the so-called Republic of Letters. It's happening in Latin language. It is happening on a very small circle of RUD, of scholars. By the 19th century following Kant and Hegel and then the birth of the research university in Germany, which is copied everywhere, philosophy and the most advanced thinking goes back into the university. And the 18th century, particularly in France, I will say, is a time when the most advanced thought is being written for a general public. It is being in the form of novels, of dialogs, of stories, of reference works, and it is very, very accessible. The most profound thought of the West has never been as accessible overall as in the 18 century.Andrew Keen: Again, excuse this question, it might seem a bit naive, but there's a lot of pre-Enlightenment work, books, thinking that we read now that's very accessible from Erasmus and Thomas More to Machiavelli. Why weren't characters like, or are characters like Erasmuus, More's Utopia, Machiavell's prints and discourses, why aren't they considered part of the Enlightenment? What's the difference between? Enlightened thinkers or the supposedly enlightened thinkers of the 18th century and thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.David Bell: That's a good question, you know, I think you have to, you, you know, again, one has to draw a line somewhere. That's not a very good answer, of course. All these people that you just mentioned are, in one way or another, predecessors to the Enlightenment. And of course, there were lots of people. I don't mean to say that nobody wrote in an accessible way before 1700. Obviously, lots of the people you mentioned did. Although a lot of them originally wrote in Latin, Erasmus, also Thomas More. But I think what makes the Enlightened different is that you have, again, you have a sense. These people have have a sense that they are themselves engaged in a collective project, that it is a collective project of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. They believe that they live in a century of progress. And there are certain principles. They don't agree on everything by any means. The philosophy of enlightenment is like nothing more than ripping each other to shreds, like any decent group of intellectuals. But that said, they generally did believe That people needed to have freedom of speech. They believed that you needed to have toleration of different religions. They believed in education and the need for a broadly educated public that could be as broad as possible. They generally believed in keeping religion out of the public sphere as much as possible, so all those principles came together into a program that we can consider at least a kind of... You know, not that everybody read it at every moment by any means, but there is an identifiable enlightenment program there, and in this case an identifiable enlightenment mindset. One other thing, I think, which is crucial to the Enlightenment, is that it was the attention they started to pay to something that we now take almost entirely for granted, which is the idea of society. The word society is so entirely ubiquitous, we assume it's always been there, and in one sense it has, because the word societas is a Latin word. But until... The 18th century, the word society generally had a much narrower meaning. It referred to, you know, particular institution most often, like when we talk about the society of, you know, the American philosophical society or something like that. And the idea that there exists something called society, which is the general sphere of human existence that is separate from religion and is separate from the political sphere, that's actually something which only really emerged at the end of the 1600s. And it became really the focus of you know, much, if not most, of enlightenment thinking. When you look at someone like Montesquieu and you look something, somebody like Rousseau or Voltaire or Adam Smith, probably above all, they were concerned with understanding how society works, not how government works only, but how society, what social interactions are like beginning of what we would now call social science. So that's yet another thing that distinguishes the enlightened from people like Machiavelli, often people like Thomas More, and people like bonuses.Andrew Keen: You noted earlier that the idea of progress is somehow baked in, in part, and certainly when it comes to Kant, certainly the French Enlightenment, although, of course, Rousseau challenged that. I'm not sure whether Rousseaut, as always, is both in and out of the Enlightenment and he seems to be in and out of everything. How did the Enlightement, though, make sense of itself in the context of antiquity, as it was, of Terms, it was the Renaissance that supposedly discovered or rediscovered antiquity. How did many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, writers, how did they think of their own society in the context of not just antiquity, but even the idea of a European or Western society?David Bell: Well, there was a great book, one of the great histories of the Enlightenment was written about more than 50 years ago by the Yale professor named Peter Gay, and the first part of that book was called The Modern Paganism. So it was about the, you know, it was very much about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the ancient Greek synonyms. And certainly the writers of the enlightenment felt a great deal of kinship with the ancient Greek synonymous. They felt a common bond, particularly in the posing. Christianity and opposing what they believed the Christian Church had wrought on Europe in suppressing freedom and suppressing free thought and suppassing free inquiry. And so they felt that they were both recovering but also going beyond antiquity at the same time. And of course they were all, I mean everybody at the time, every single major figure of the Enlightenment, their education consisted in large part of what we would now call classics, right? I mean, there was an educational reformer in France in the 1760s who said, you know, our educational system is great if the purpose is to train Roman centurions, if it's to train modern people who are not doing both so well. And it's true. I mean they would spend, certainly, you know in Germany, in much of Europe, in the Netherlands, even in France, I mean people were trained not simply to read Latin, but to write in Latin. In Germany, university courses took part in the Latin language. So there's an enormous, you know, so they're certainly very, very conversant with the Greek and Roman classics, and they identify with them to a very great extent. Someone like Rousseau, I mean, and many others, and what's his first reading? How did he learn to read by reading Plutarch? In translation, but he learns to read reading Plutach. He sees from the beginning by this enormous admiration for the ancients that we get from Bhutan.Andrew Keen: Was Socrates relevant here? Was the Enlightenment somehow replacing Aristotle with Socrates and making him and his spirit of Enlightenment, of asking questions rather than answering questions, the symbol of a new way of thinking?David Bell: I would say to a certain extent, so I mean, much of the Enlightenment criticizes scholasticism, medieval scholastic, very, very sharply, and medieval scholasticism is founded philosophically very heavily upon Aristotle, so to that extent. And the spirit of skepticism that Socrates embodied, the idea of taking nothing for granted and asking questions about everything, including questions of oneself, yes, absolutely. That said, while the great figures of the Red Plato, you know, Socrates was generally I mean, it was not all that present as they come. But certainly have people with people with red play-doh in the entire virus.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier, David. Most of the Enlightenment, of course, seems to be centered in France and Scotland, Germany, England. But America, many Europeans went to America then as a, what some people would call a settler colonial society, or certainly an offshoot of the European world. Was the settling of America and the American Revolution Was it the quintessential Enlightenment project?David Bell: Another very good question, and again, it depends a bit on who you talk to. I just mentioned this book by Peter Gay, and the last part of his book is called The Science of Freedom, and it's all about the American Revolution. So certainly a lot of interpreters of the Enlightenment have said that, yes, the American revolution represents in a sense the best possible outcome of the American Revolution, it was the best, possible outcome of the enlightened. Certainly there you look at the founding fathers of the United States and there's a great deal that they took from me like Certainly, they took a great great number of political ideas from Obviously Madison was very much inspired and drafting the edifice of the Constitution by Montesquieu to see himself Was happy to admit in addition most of the founding Fathers of the united states were you know had kind of you know We still had we were still definitely Christians, but we're also but we were also very much influenced by deism were very much against the idea of making the United States a kind of confessional country where Christianity was dominant. They wanted to believe in the enlightenment principles of free speech, religious toleration and so on and so forth. So in all those senses and very much the gun was probably more inspired than Franklin was somebody who was very conversant with the European Enlightenment. He spent a large part of his life in London. Where he was in contact with figures of the Enlightenment. He also, during the American Revolution, of course, he was mostly in France, where he is vetted by some of the surviving fellows and were very much in contact for them as well. So yes, I would say the American revolution is certainly... And then the American revolutionary scene, of course by the Europeans, very much as a kind of offshoot of the enlightenment. So one of the great books of the late Enlightenment is by Condor Say, which he wrote while he was hiding actually in the future evolution of the chariot. It's called a historical sketch of the progress of the human spirit, or the human mind, and you know he writes about the American Revolution as being, basically owing its existence to being like...Andrew Keen: Franklin is of course an example of your pre-academic enlightenment, a generalist, inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, political thinker. What about the role of science and indeed economics in the Enlightenment? David, we're going to talk of course about the Marxist interpretation, perhaps the Marxist interpretation which sees The Enlightenment is just a euphemism, perhaps, for exploitative capitalism. How central was the growth and development of the market, of economics, and innovation, and capitalism in your reading of The Enlightened?David Bell: Well, in my reading, it was very important, but not in the way that the Marxists used to say. So Friedrich Engels once said that the Enlightenment was basically the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and there was whole strain of Marxist thinking that followed the assumption that, and then Karl Marx himself argued that the documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which obviously were inspired by the Enlightment, were simply kind of the near, or kind of. Way that the bourgeoisie was able to advance itself ideologically, and I don't think that holds much water, which is very little indication that any particular economic class motivated the Enlightenment or was using the Enlightment in any way. That said, I think it's very difficult to imagine the Enlightement without the social and economic changes that come in with the 18th century. To begin with globalization. If you read the great works of the Enlightenment, it's remarkable just how open they are to talking about humanity in general. So one of Voltaire's largest works, one of his most important works, is something called Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations, which is actually History of the World, where he talks learnedly not simply about Europe, but about the Americas, about China, about Africa, about India. Montesquieu writes Persian letters. Christian Volpe writes about Chinese philosophy. You know, Rousseau writes about... You know, the earliest days of humankind talks about Africa. All the great figures of the Enlightenment are writing about the rest of the world, and this is a period in which contacts between Europe and the rest the world are exploding along with international trade. So by the end of the 18th century, there are 4,000 to 5,000 ships a year crossing the Atlantic. It's an enormous number. And that's one context in which the enlightenment takes place. Another is what we call the consumer revolution. So in the 18th century, certainly in the major cities of Western Europe, people of a wide range of social classes, including even artisans, sort of somewhat wealthy artisians, shopkeepers, are suddenly able to buy a much larger range of products than they were before. They're able to choose how to basically furnish their own lives, if you will, how they're gonna dress, what they're going to eat, what they gonna put on the walls of their apartments and so on and so forth. And so they become accustomed to exercising a great deal more personal choice than their ancestors have done. And the Enlightenment really develops in tandem with this. Most of the great works of the Enlightment, they're not really written to, they're treatises, they're like Kant, they're written to persuade you to think in a single way. Really written to make you ask questions yourself, to force you to ponder things. They're written in the form of puzzles and riddles. Voltaire had a great line there, he wrote that the best kind of books are the books that readers write half of themselves as they read, and that's sort of the quintessence of the Enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.Andrew Keen: Yeah, Voltaire might have been comfortable on YouTube or Facebook. David, you mentioned all those ships going from Europe across the Atlantic. Of course, many of those ships were filled with African slaves. You mentioned this in your piece. I mean, this is no secret, of course. You also mentioned a couple of times Montesquieu's Persian letters. To what extent is... The enlightenment then perhaps the birth of Western power, of Western colonialism, of going to Africa, seizing people, selling them in North America, the French, the English, Dutch colonization of the rest of the world. Of course, later more sophisticated Marxist thinkers from the Frankfurt School, you mentioned these in your essay, Odorno and Horkheimer in particular, See the Enlightenment as... A project, if you like, of Western domination. I remember reading many years ago when I was in graduate school, Edward Said, his analysis of books like The Persian Letters, which is a form of cultural Western power. How much of this is simply bound up in the profound, perhaps, injustice of the Western achievement? And of course, some of the justice as well. We haven't talked about Jefferson, but perhaps in Jefferson's life and his thinking and his enlightened principles and his... Life as a slave owner, these contradictions are most self-evident.David Bell: Well, there are certainly contradictions, and there's certainly... I think what's remarkable, if you think about it, is that if you read through works of the Enlightenment, you would be hard-pressed to find a justification for slavery. You do find a lot of critiques of slavery, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind. Obviously, the chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas began well before the Enlightment, it began in 1500. The Enlightenment doesn't have the credit for being the first movement to oppose slavery. That really goes back to various religious groups, especially the Fakers. But that said, you have in France, you had in Britain, in America even, you'd have a lot of figures associated with the Enlightenment who were pretty sure of becoming very forceful opponents of slavery very early. Now, when it comes to imperialism, that's a tricky issue. What I think you'd find in these light bulbs, you'd different sorts of tendencies and different sorts of writings. So there are certainly a lot of writers of the Enlightenment who are deeply opposed to European authorities. One of the most popular works of the late Enlightenment was a collective work edited by the man named the Abbe Rinal, which is called The History of the Two Indies. And that is a book which is deeply, deeply critical of European imperialism. At the same time, at the same of the enlightenment, a lot the works of history written during the Enlightment. Tended, such as Voltaire's essay on customs, which I just mentioned, tend to give a kind of very linear version of history. They suggest that all societies follow the same path, from sort of primitive savagery, hunter-gatherers, through early agriculture, feudal stages, and on into sort of modern commercial society and civilization. And so they're basically saying, okay, we, the Europeans, are the most advanced. People like the Africans and the Native Americans are the least advanced, and so perhaps we're justified in going and quote, bringing our civilization to them, what later generations would call the civilizing missions, or possibly just, you know, going over and exploiting them because we are stronger and we are more, and again, we are the best. And then there's another thing that the Enlightenment did. The Enlightenment tended to destroy an older Christian view of humankind, which in some ways militated against modern racism. Christians believed, of course, that everyone was the same from Adam and Eve, which meant that there was an essential similarity in the world. And the Enlightenment challenged this by challenging the biblical kind of creation. The Enlightenment challenges this. Voltaire, for instance, believed that there had actually been several different human species that had different origins, and that can very easily become a justification for racism. Buffon, one of the most Figures of the French Enlightenment, one of the early naturalists, was crucial for trying to show that in fact nature is not static, that nature is always changing, that species are changing, including human beings. And so again, that allowed people to think in terms of human beings at different stages of evolution, and perhaps this would be a justification for privileging the more advanced humans over the less advanced. In the 18th century itself, most of these things remain potential, rather than really being acted upon. But in the 19th century, figures of writers who would draw upon these things certainly went much further, and these became justifications for slavery, imperialism, and other things. So again, the Enlightenment is the source of a great deal of stuff here, and you can't simply put it into one box or more.Andrew Keen: You mentioned earlier, David, that Concorda wrote one of the later classics of the... Condorcet? Sorry, Condorcets, excuse my French. Condorcès wrote one the later Classics of the Enlightenment when he was hiding from the French Revolution. In your mind, was the revolution itself the natural conclusion, climax? Perhaps anti-climax of the Enlightenment. Certainly, it seems as if a lot of the critiques of the French Revolution, particularly the more conservative ones, Burke comes to mind, suggested that perhaps the principles of in the Enlightment inevitably led to the guillotine, or is that an unfair way of thinking of it?David Bell: Well, there are a lot of people who have thought like that. Edmund Burke already, writing in 1790, in his reflections on the revolution in France, he said that everything which was great in the old regime is being dissolved and, quoting, dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. And then he said about the French that in the groves of their academy at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing but the Gallows. So there, in 1780, he already seemed to be predicting the reign of terror and blaming it. A certain extent from the Enlightenment. That said, I think, you know, again, the French Revolution is incredibly complicated event. I mean, you certainly have, you know, an explosion of what we could call Enlightenment thinking all over the place. In France, it happened in France. What happened there was that you had a, you know, the collapse of an extraordinarily inefficient government and a very, you know, in a very antiquated, paralyzed system of government kind of collapsed, created a kind of political vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped a lot of figures who were definitely readers of the Enlightenment. Oh so um but again the Enlightment had I said I don't think you can call the Enlightement a single thing so to say that the Enlightiment inspired the French Revolution rather than the There you go.Andrew Keen: Although your essay on liberties is the Enlightenment then and now you probably didn't write is always these lazy editors who come up with inaccurate and inaccurate titles. So for you, there is no such thing as the Enlighten.David Bell: No, there is. There is. But still, it's a complex thing. It contains multitudes.Andrew Keen: So it's the Enlightenment rather than the United States.David Bell: Conflicting tendencies, it has contradictions within it. There's enough unity to refer to it as a singular noun, but it doesn't mean that it all went in one single direction.Andrew Keen: But in historical terms, did the failure of the French Revolution, its descent into Robespierre and then Bonaparte, did it mark the end in historical terms a kind of bookend of history? You began in 1720 by 1820. Was the age of the Enlightenment pretty much over?David Bell: I would say yes. I think that, again, one of the things about the French Revolution is that people who are reading these books and they're reading these ideas and they are discussing things really start to act on them in a very different way from what it did before the French revolution. You have a lot of absolute monarchs who are trying to bring certain enlightenment principles to bear in their form of government, but they're not. But it's difficult to talk about a full-fledged attempt to enact a kind of enlightenment program. Certainly a lot of the people in the French Revolution saw themselves as doing that. But as they did it, they ran into reality, I would say. I mean, now Tocqueville, when he writes his old regime in the revolution, talks about how the French philosophes were full of these abstract ideas that were divorced from reality. And while that's an exaggeration, there was a certain truth to them. And as soon as you start having the age of revolutions, as soon you start people having to devise systems of government that will actually last, and as you have people, democratic representative systems that will last, and as they start revising these systems under the pressure of actual events, then you're not simply talking about an intellectual movement anymore, you're talking about something very different. And so I would say that, well, obviously the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to inspire people, the books continue to be read, debated. They lead on to figures like Kant, and as we talked about earlier, Kant leads to Hegel, Hegel leads to Marx in a certain sense. Nonetheless, by the time you're getting into the 19th century, what you have, you know, has connections to the Enlightenment, but can we really still call it the Enlightment? I would sayAndrew Keen: And Tocqueville, of course, found democracy in America. Is democracy itself? I know it's a big question. But is it? Bound up in the Enlightenment. You've written extensively, David, both for liberties and elsewhere on liberalism. Is the promise of democracy, democratic systems, the one born in the American Revolution, promised in the French Revolution, not realized? Are they products of the Enlightment, or is the 19th century and the democratic systems that in the 19th century, is that just a separate historical track?David Bell: Again, I would say there are certain things in the Enlightenment that do lead in that direction. Certainly, I think most figures in the enlightenment in one general sense or another accepted the idea of a kind of general notion of popular sovereignty. It didn't mean that they always felt that this was going to be something that could necessarily be acted upon or implemented in their own day. And they didn't necessarily associate generalized popular sovereignty with what we would now call democracy with people being able to actually govern themselves. Would be certain figures, certainly Diderot and some of his essays, what we saw very much in the social contract, you know, were sketching out, you knows, models for possible democratic system. Condorcet, who actually lived into the French Revolution, wrote one of the most draft constitutions for France, that's one of most democratic documents ever proposed. But of course there were lots of figures in the Enlightenment, Voltaire, and others who actually believed much more in absolute monarchy, who believed that you just, you know, you should have. Freedom of speech and freedom of discussion, out of which the best ideas would emerge, but then you had to give those ideas to the prince who imposed them by poor sicknesses.Andrew Keen: And of course, Rousseau himself, his social contract, some historians have seen that as the foundations of totalitarian, modern totalitarianism. Finally, David, your wonderful essay in Liberties in the spring quarterly 2025 is The Enlightenment, Then and Now. What about now? You work at Princeton, your president has very bravely stood up to the new presidential regime in the United States, in defense of academic intellectual freedom. Does the word and the movement, does it have any relevance in the 2020s, particularly in an age of neo-authoritarianism around the world?David Bell: I think it does. I think we have to be careful about it. I always get a little nervous when people say, well, we should simply go back to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenments is history. We don't go back the 18th century. I think what we need to do is to recover certain principles, certain ideals from the 18 century, the ones that matter to us, the ones we think are right, and make our own Enlightenment better. I don't think we need be governed by the 18 century. Thomas Paine once said that no generation should necessarily rule over every generation to come, and I think that's probably right. Unfortunately in the United States, we have a constitution which is now essentially unamendable, so we're doomed to live by a constitution largely from the 18th century. But are there many things in the Enlightenment that we should look back to, absolutely?Andrew Keen: Well, David, I am going to free you for your own French Enlightenment. You can go and have some croissant now in your local cafe in Paris. Thank you so much for a very, I excuse the pun, enlightening conversation on the Enlightenment then and now, Essential Essay in Liberties. I'd love to get you back on the show. Talk more history. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe